“Should I be?” His brow narrowed a notch. The grip on her throat loosened. He dragged one finger across her clavicle, stopping at the cut her mother had given her, then smudged the blood, eyes going cold.
“I want nothing to do with you,” Audrey spat. “Sophia had that right.”
“So gracious,” he murmured. “I just saved the most valuable thing on this planet. The fire I started might’ve tipped off law enforcement. Impulsive—even for me.”
“I didn’t need your help.”
“Sophia nearly put that blade straight through you.” He tapped the blood, casual, like pointing out a stain.
“Didn’t ask you to stop her.” Audrey fixed him with a glare.
“Normal people never ask first,” he said with a grin.
“What would you know about normal people?”
He didn’t bother to reply. The answer was obvious—this man was nowhere near normal.
Fuck this.
Audrey braced her hands against the uneven brick behind her, inhaled deeply despite the discomfort in her ribcage, and focused hard, surging telepathically into Mihail’s mind.
The world blew apart.
Violence crashed through her mind—cities aflame and a man crowned in obsidian watching it all in an arena. His face and those eyes were forever burned into her retinas.
Ryker.
Another lurch, and she was inside a hall carved from black stone.
Mihail knelt before Ryker, who sat on a gleaming black throne. He didn’t move. He didn’t have to. The same crown made of obsidian hooked around his temples like claws. Audrey felt the emotion before she understood its cause—fear. Not the kind men felt for monsters, but the kind soldiers felt for a commander who could order them to die and be obeyed.
The memory shifted.
A girl walked toward the crowned man with a smirk, one hand on her hip. She was alive and whole, but Audrey’s mind rejected the image instantly—Cary was supposed to be dead.
Then the girl turned her head, and the scar across her throat gleamed in the light.
It was her.
Pain burst in Audrey’s skull, yanking her out of the vision. She staggered backward, holding her head as the reality of the alley fell back into place around her.
Mihail pressed his knuckles against his brow, then glared down at her. “Find anything interesting?” he asked.
She swallowed, her throat sore. “How do you know my sister?”
“You’re not the only telepath we’re tracking,” he replied, amusement curling back through his voice. “You look just like her, you know.”
“We’re twins, you stupid fuck,” she ground out. “Of course, we look identical.”
“Yes,” he agreed mildly. “But she has a rather distinctive mark across her throat from having it slit. Hard to miss.”
Audrey’s breath faltered. The idea of her sister alive, walking around some alien megacity while Audrey rotted on Earth, made her dizzy. She was still in shock. “How do you know her?” Audrey demanded, shoving him.
He rocked back a fraction and laughed. “Your mother brought her to Nepra ten years ago—we Voíríans have been stuck there for a millennium, so it's obvious when someone new shows up.”
Footfalls splashed in the poodles of rain, and Emerson appeared out of the shadows. He shoved Mihail onto the pavement.
The fight lasted mere seconds.
