1. PEYTON PRICE
The scene around me is as simple as a painting.
I’m levitating four feet above the bloodied ground in the garden at the front of Bloodwing Academy. The grass is strewn with bodies, and the fence is blasted apart in places.
I spent a year imprisoned here, at this Academy run by Lady Tirelli, a woman who tortured, maimed, and killed others to make herself more powerful.
Right now, a powerful witch and a dangerous man with icy blue eyes bar the gate behind me. They’re my enemies, but they aren’t the ones holding my attention.
A hellhound lies broken and dying in the dirt below me.
He has four fatal bullet wounds in his chest and another in his thigh. While three of the bullets must have passed through his body, I can sense the metal of the other two bullets lodged in his flesh. One of them is dangerously close to his heart.
I drag up his name from my memory: Striker Draven.
After everything I went through… all the torment… he was the one who created me.
The echo of his fists returns to me—every punch that, only moments ago, broke my ribs or busted up my face.
In those moments, he forced me to hate him.
He created a hatred in me that could only be so strong because it was once love.
I had loved him. With all of my heart. More than my own life.
And he had loved me. For months, he endured beatings, keeping the violence hidden from me and taking the brunt of it in my stead.
I came back here to this dark academy to save him, but now…
Well. I am a Fury now.
A full Fury.
My hair has turned crimson-red, the strands lifting around my face, their color matching that of my claws. Several of them have extended to form three snakes, two of which now circle my waist while the third is nestled around my shoulders.
The scent of wildflowers wafts around me, my power of compulsion filling the air.
My broken bones have snapped back into their places, and my skin, now luminescent, shows not a sign of the bloodied welts from the bites and scratches I endured only moments ago.
But most important are the changes within my mind.
Guilt and innocence are sharply distinct and there is no gray in between.
I have a sense that my former self grappled with many doubts and many choices. Her heart tugged in different directions, but now my thoughts are uncomplicated.
I am unburdened by emotion. Even names mean little to me.
“Striker Draven,” I murmur, my voice soft, its cadence feeling new within my throat. “How did I ever love you?”
He doesn’t take his eyes off me. The streams of fiery lava crisscrossing his bare chest are cooling and becoming dark. His hellhound form is fading.
When he becomes fully human again, he will die.
The resignation in his eyes tells me he has accepted his fate, but still, he looks up at me as if I am somehow his final salvation.
I’m forced to refocus on the threats around me when, from behind me, the powerful witch jolts toward me.
Her name is Vulture. It isn’t her real name, but it’s a fitting choice. She used to wear a glamour that made her appear to be an elderly woman with glasses. Then she revealed her true appearance: tall, slender, with luxurious blonde hair, sparkling green eyes, and no older than in her forties.
