“You’d burn the world for him,” she whispered.
Kat didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.
“You embarrassed him last night,” Kat said, gesturing toward the narrow forest path. “And Ryker Vallali does not forgive humiliation.”
Audrey didn’t move.
The rope creaked above the gate. Felix’s body turned slowly in the wind. He had trusted her. And Audrey had killed him.
“Don’t forget,” Kat said. Then her voice hardened. “Control your power. Or it will kill someone else.”
She started down the path.
“Come on.”
Kat didn’t look back.
“Ryker’s waiting.”
A beat passed.
“He’s already prepared the demonstration.”
Audrey trudged after her. She could grieve Felix later, if people like them were ever allowed a later.
Right now, all that mattered was surviving this next encounter with Ryker and making sure Cary didn’t become the next warning strung up for the others to see.
32
They came out at the edge of a frost-bitten meadow. Dead grass bent in whispering arcs under the bone-colored sky.
Wind twisted the rope of the hanging body behind him while Ryker stood laughing. The sound carried too easily in the open air. It was bright and warm—and wrong. She watched him rake back his hair, wind-blown strands falling across a face split with laughter.
Despite its beauty, such a sound did not belong.
Heat and chill clashed under Audrey’s ribs, visceral enough to pull her eyes shut. She would give anything to go back and make a different choice if it meant keeping Felix alive. But she couldn’t—she’d made her bed, and now, she had to lie in it.
She took a deep breath of air into her lungs.
And when she opened her eyes a few moments later, the helpless feeling that had plagued her was gone. In its place was a far more valuable one.
Confidence.
Her hands heated. She’d previously breached Ryker’s mind—and survived. She’d learned from it. Now, the urge to do it again felt necessary, not reckless.
His laughing stopped, and he turned slowly, his disconcerting eyes sweeping the meadow until they found her. Even at a distance, she felt his attention slide across her skin—slow, deliberate. He flicked the cigarette aside and murmured something to Kat before facing Audrey fully.
Then the pressure inside her head increased. It felt subtle at first, as if he were testing her again.
Let me in.
But Audrey didn’t retreat; she refined. Instead of blocking him outright, she developed her mind into something lean and structured, determined to show him she could hold her own.
He searched but found nothing.
He advanced, unfazed, boots biting into the frost at every step.
“Good morning.”
