That’s him.
Thepnévmainside her turned.
The projection towered over the courtyard through fractured blue light, almost solid. Wind moved through his hair, catching on the same carelessly disheveled look she remembered from the night of the murders. It seemed as if he had stepped out of memory and into the freezing air before her. He acted with predatory ease. Each shift of his body was controlled yet never looked forced.
Cheers rang around the courtyard as people shouted his name, clapped, and stamped their feet in wild unison. Some faces shone in rapture, others showed apprehension—together, their voices thundered through the yard.
Then he smiled.
It hit Audrey like a blow.
Not because it was kind—there was nothing kind in it—but because it was beautiful in the most infuriating possible way. Her body reacted before her disgust could catch up. What the fuck was wrong with her?
He looked almost unchanged from the first time she saw him in her backyard—only meaner, more finished. Time affected everyone, yet had passed by him. He wore plain black clothes,but even as a projection, he outshone the others. He was not as large as some towering Voíríans, but he was built with a harsher accuracy that made size irrelevant.
None of that should have mattered. Only his power mattered.
Even at a distance and through projection, his power pressed on her lungs. His presence dominated the courtyard. The hologram almost seemed like a lie.
The most revolting part was that something inside Audrey recognized him. It was a shared intensity she could not name, as if her own power were answering his.
She rubbed hard at her sternum, trying to scrub the feeling out.
Then his smile fell, and he spoke.
Audrey had heard him speak before, but only where it was at least bearable—inside her head.
There, it had been a whisper.
Here, it was a command.
The sound of his tenor outside her mind was lower than she expected. Smoother and controlled in a way that rendered every word chosen. In her head, Ryker had continually felt intimate in the ugliest way. Out here, with the whole courtyard forced to hear him, he became something larger.
She felt the reaction murmur through the people around her before she even understood her own. Backs straightened abruptly, eyes dropped in instinctive submission, and even the guards seemed to tense and shift their stance. It was as though the sound alone could reach through walls and exact punishment for any sign of weakness.
Audrey bit her lip, straining to comprehend his words.
She could not understand most of what he was saying, and that enraged her. But the cadence still got under her skin. Survival. Resistance. And the Aggregate—the ruling government, the power that claimed every inch of the countryas its dominion—was obsessive in its quest for control and obedience. She caught just enough to know he was promising them something bigger than vengeance.
“The Aggregate believes they own the future,” Ryker said.
His smile turned sinister. “They’re wrong.”
Ryker’s gaze swept the crowd. “They believe power belongs to whoever can seize it...but they’re wrong about that, too.”
He let the words register before adding, “Power belongs to whoever can control it.”
Another pause.
“That is the difference between rulers and corpses.”
Ryker’s voice moved through her like poison with a pulse. She hated that it affected her at all. Hated him more for making it impossible not to feel.
“The Aggregate calls us traitors. History will call us necessary.”
When he finished with his fist lifted, the crowd answered together.
“CARRY ALL BEFORE ONE! CARRY ALL BEFORE ONE!”
