She dropped the makeshift toothbrush weapon—she didn’t need it anymore. The cold switchblade shook in her hand. “Good,” she said in a soft voice. “Then we all get what we deserve.”
Basir lunged. Audrey grabbed him by the throat, and they struggled for several seconds. He stabbed her thigh. She barely felt it at first. Her whole body was already burning.
She burned him as gold fire climbed her arm, wild and greedy.
The Magister had awakened something in her—a wild urge. It burst to life, making it increasingly impossible to ignore. Craving it unsettled her. Would this power control her as her mother thought? Would it make her cruel, dangerous to Taryn or anyone else? Before the Magister, the cuffs quieted everything. Now, they scarcely contained her.
Whatever had woken inside her was done pretending to be small.
Basir’s screams scraped the ceiling as he held his inflamed throat. She dropped him only when he turned quiet. Blooddripped down her leg. She seared the wound closed with her own heat, biting back a scream. It was still hard to control and difficult to summon, but she managed. Red clouded her vision.
Basir crawled away, pathetically, leaving streaks of blood.
Audrey seized him by the collar and dragged him back. “What was it you said to me?” she asked, power imbuing her words.
He couldn’t answer. His mouth spilled blood.
“Look at me,” she growled. “Look at me when I kill you.”
He trembled—eyes moving toward Nikos.
Audrey smashed his head into the floor a few times, marking each hit with her words.
“LOOK.
AT.
ME.”
She sounded as insane as she felt. “It will be my face you see,” she whispered, “when the last spark leaves your eyes.”
She drew back her arm?—
—but Nikos’s fist crashed across her temple. Light burst behind her eyes. Audrey dropped hard, one hand skidding across the floor, the room pitching sideways around her.
She didn’t black out. She almost wished she had.
Through the drumming inside her head, she heard Basir choking, Taryn sobbing, Nikos swearing in Voírían. Someone kicked the knife away. Someone else called her a curse.
By the time she forced her eyes open, they had her pinned.
Hours later,Audrey lay in the back of the truck again, the world reduced to the sound of rattling metal.
Her thigh throbbed hot and swollen. Someone had wrapped a bandage around her half-melted cauterization job, but it did nothing for the pain. Her lip was split, puffed to twice its size, and her shirt had dried stiff with blood.
It was worth it.
Pain meant she’d drawn blood first. She’d left marks.
Grinning through the metallic taste in her mouth, she licked her fingers, smearing dried blood.
“Hope that bastard Basir’s hurting worse than me,” she said hoarsely to no one, imagining him writhing and blistered.
Or dead—preferably dead—like Nassar.
She’d already earned her place on the wall they talked about. May as well drag more of these Separatists with her.
She’d always been good at ruining things.
