This was the lion’s den, her mother’s world—a world she’d never belonged to. A world that would gladly devour her.
Nikos climbed onto a concrete platform and dumped three prisoners at his feet, all zip-tied. One shouted until Nikos shut him up with a fist. Even Audrey wished the man would stop. Then she saw her—Taryn.
Her body had been hoisted onto a pole, limbs hanging slack, dead eyes reflecting the bonfires. The sight tore something inside Audrey wide open. Tears burned her eyes, and her weak stomach rebelled. She threw up her only meal onto the straw.
Whatever followed next wanted an audience. If Ryker wanted a spectacle, she would give him one. Audrey fisted her hands at her sides, pretending they were wrapped around Number One’s neck.
Instead of a meek victim, they would get a display of resistance and calculation—a warning that she would not go quietly, and she would not go alone. Whatever Ryker had planned for her, she would make it matter.
Audrey would start the fight on her own terms.
26
Audrey had no idea how long she’d waited—minutes, hours, maybe both. They still had her locked in a metal holding stall inside a processing shed that opened onto Home Field’s central courtyard, but from the bars she could see everything.
Taryn’s mutilated corpse passed hand-to-hand through the crowd, borne above them like an offering. Each glimpse made her physically ill, but also more furious.
Even through the restraints, the crowd’s thoughts battered her mind. They were feverish with wild devotion—and also tempered with fear.
A few of the Voíríans watching her looked unsettled, their thoughts flitting with the same strange word before they smothered it.
Triad.
Then, as if a great invisible hand pushed down upon the multitude, silence rippled across the gathering.
A chilling calm rolled through them.
She thought of Cary. The last buoy that tied her to the universe.
Deep in her mind, Audrey felt a growl waking and rising. The monster inside her—herpnévma, if that was truly what it was—shuddered awake. She didn't know what apnévmawas meant to be. It sounded like some combination of power and presence. She suspected it was more than merely a weapon. It was a force belonging to her, yet also separate. She clenched her fists until her nails split skin. The stirring didn’t stop, yet it gave her strength, something she desperately needed right now.
Was this what they all feared? Not just power, but whatever carried it?
Her hands gripped the icy metal of the cage. The stalls flanked the shed like pens, as if Home Field had been designed to sort livestock and rebels with the same architecture. Her breath clouded the air.
Movement flashed at the periphery of her vision.
The woman from Taryn’s memories—short dark hair, a green vine tattoo winding around her neck—wove through the crowd toward the raised concrete platform at the center of the courtyard.
Number Three.
Audrey would never forget her face. Tall, graceful, olive-skinned like Audrey, almond-eyed and unreadable, she moved with the terrible ease of someone who knew the entire courtyard would bend around her. Power rolled off her hard enough for Audrey to feel it from the cage.
Apprehension rolled through the men on the platform.
Fists lifted together as Number Three passed. The crowd parted for her without being told. Their hush felt devotional in a way Audrey found worse than chanting.
A half-smile curled her lips as Number Three approached Nikos, thanking him without speaking. Gratitude, like a predator praising the hunter who’d cornered the prey forher. She grasped his shoulder and moved forward, examining Taryn’s desecrated body on its stake with an unreadable calm.
The platform stilled. Even the bonfires seemed to bow their flames.
Number Three clicked her receiver. “Number One has a message for you all,” she announced—this time in Aggregate Standard. A deliberate choice. A universal summoning.
The crowd bent forward as one.
A hologram blazed to life over the platform.
Audrey sucked in a deep breath, suddenly unable to breathe. Her body knew before her mind caught up.
