Time fractured. I looked at Selene, burning with a light thatcould level the city, and then at Varessia, whose hunger had just found a new, infinite source.
A piercing, icy panic clawed at my chest, instantly suppressed by a brutal necessity. If Varessia took her now, Selene entered a cage she would never leave. She would become a specimen.
Eamon was already gone. I couldn’t save the dead. But I could save the living—by becoming the monster she needed to hate. If she despised me, she would fight me. If she fought me, she stayed free.
It was the only play left.
I made the choice.
“The roof is collapsing!” I roared, grabbing Varessia’s arm.
“No! Get her!”
“We have the sample!” I shouted, pointing at the canister of Eamon’s magic that a technician had dragged to the door. “If we stay, we lose it all! Look at her! She’s bringing the whole district down!”
Another wave of power rolled off Selene—gold and black, beautiful and terrifying. It smashed the walkway I had dropped, turning metal to shrapnel. If we stay any minute longer Selene will kill us all. Leaving now will save her life.
Varessia hesitated. She looked at Selene—the true prize in the wreckage. Then she looked at the canister.
“Move!” I snarled.
I looked back one last time.
Selene stood at the epicentre of the ruin. The gold and black storm spiralled around her, tearing the very air apart.
Her eyes found mine across the chaos. The warmth I had seen this morning had vanished, replaced by an absolute hatred.
I had saved her life. The loathing in her eyes was a price I paid with a broken determination. And in doing so, I had shattered the fragile connection that had finally begun to make the silence loud.
TWENTY-FOUR
Selene
Silver water rained down from the laboratory ceiling, heavy and viscous, coating the floor and rising around my ankles like liquid mercury. It made no sound. The fire alarm flashed—red, red, red—but the world had been muted.
I screamed, but my voice was gone. I hammered on the glass of the containment cube, but my fists slid off the surface, useless and weak.
Inside, Eamon was dying.
No longer strapped to the table, he floated in the rising silver tide, the tubes in his arm glowing bright white, pulsing like a second heartbeat. He looked at me. His face was grey, drained of everything that made him my father, leaving only clear, terrifying eyes.
He opened his mouth. In the waking world, the water and the alarm had swallowed his voice. Here, in my nightmare, the words hit me like stones.
“I’m sorry, Selene.”
I begged him to stop. I begged him to live.
“Trust him.”
The command echoed inside my skull, vibrating against my teeth.Trust him.
I shook my head.“Who?”
Then the shadows moved.
Riven stepped out of the silver rain. He stood beside the glass, dry, untouched, perfectly composed. He focused entirely on me, ignoring Eamon. His eyes were dark, the silver magic spinning lazily in their depths.
Varessia appeared at his shoulder. She placed a hand on his coat—possessive, familiar. She leaned in and whispered something in his ear, and Riven nodded.
