Page 212 of Villainous Rise

Or more accurately, the blood spreading across my lab floor.

“Sir!” He pivoted toward me, face paling as he took in my mangled arm.

I shook my head, gesturing toward Annie with my good hand. “Help her first. She’s the priority.”

“But sir, you’re losing too much blood.”

“Annie,” I insisted. “Her arm needs treatment. And monitor her vitals. The cuff is experimental.”

“Sir, with all due respect, you’re going into shock. The amount of blood you’ve lost⁠—“

I couldn’t hear the rest of what he was saying. His mouth kept moving, but the words dissolved into meaningless noise. I looked down at my arm again, fascinated by the way the implant had torn through. The Hammer’s components glowed faintly beneath the gore, pulses of energy still trying to complete the task I had set for it.

My legs suddenly felt weak. I reached for the edge of the workbench to steady myself, but my coordination was off. My hand missed, and I staggered sideways.

“Annie,” I mumbled, my tongue feeling thick and uncooperative. “Is she stable?”

Havoc appeared in my narrowing field of vision, his face a mask of concern. Strange to see him looking at me that way. Like he actually gave a damn.

“She’s stable,” he confirmed, his voice echoing strangely. “The cuff is working.”

Relief flooded through me, warm and overwhelming. She was alive. My Annie had survived. Halcyon didn’t take her from me. In that moment, nothing else mattered—not my arm, not the Hammer, not even the blood pooling beneath my feet.

I tried to move toward her, but my legs wouldn’t cooperate. The room tilted violently, the floor rushing up to meet me. Someone caught me before I hit the ground. Havoc, I think. The ceiling spun above me, lights blurring into streaks.

“The Hammer,” I tried to explain, my words slurring. “Interfering with healing. Need to remove it.”

I forced my gaze back to Annie one last time. Her chest rising and falling steadily. The cuff glowed softly around her wrist, containing the chaos within. She was safe. She was alive.

My world hadn’t ended.

The thought brought a strange peace as darkness closed in around me.

CHAPTER 39

ANNIE

The golden light blinded me before it consumed me. It flowed through my veins like liquid sunlight, impossibly hot. I was on the cold concrete floor of the abandoned testing facility, or maybe I was on the metal workbench in Cipher’s lab. The locations bled together into a chaotic blur of shadows and blinding gold.

Such a beautiful fire, Annie.

The voice slithered through my mind and wrapped around the stolen energy I had taken from Helios. The heat building inside my blood should have been agonizing. It should have torn me apart from the inside out. I braced myself for the torturous pain from before.

The pain never came.

A deep, thrumming warmth spread through me. It felt incredible. It felt like waking up after a lifetime of sleeping in the freezing cold. The power vibrated against my bones in a steady rhythm of pure, unadulterated ecstasy. I wanted more of it. I wanted to drown in the golden flames licking beneath my skin.

Hands grabbed my shoulders. Cipher leaned over me, his silver eyes wide with a frantic desperation I had never seen before. He held a cuff in his left hand while his right forearm pulsed a violent white-hot glow beneath the skin.

“Hold on, Annie,” he ordered, his voice cracking.

He pressed the cuff against my wrist and the moment his fingers brushed my glowing skin, the golden fire leaped from my veins to his.

“Stop,” I gasped. My voice echoed with a distorted, overlapping harmonic that didn’t belong to me. “You have to let go. Please.”

He ignored me as he kept working.

The flames crawled up his hands. His skin blistered and blackened instantly. His suit melted directly into his flesh.