If he came to watch, I'd have another chance.
The panic was still there, still clawing at my insides. But beneath it, growing stronger with every step the guards dragged me forward, was something else. Something cold and sharp and murderous.
Determination.
Because Declan Hewes was walking away right now, disappearing into the shadows of Persico's fortress, thinking he'd won. Thinking I was finished, worthless, no longer a threat.
He was wrong.
The guards shoved me through a doorway, and I stumbled, my legs finally remembering how to work. Theholding cell was small, dark, reeking of despair and old violence. The door slammed shut behind me with a finality that made my stomach lurch.
I stood there in the darkness, my whole body trembling, my breath still coming too fast, my heart still hammering like it was trying to escape my body. The panic threatened to pull me under, to drown me in terror and hopelessness.
I pressed my back against the cold metal wall and slid down until I was sitting on the filthy floor. Wrapped my arms around my knees. Tasted blood and swallowed it down. Felt the ache of bruises and welcomed it, because pain meant I was still alive.
I forced my breathing to slow. Counted each inhalation, each exhalation, until the rhythm became mechanical. Automatic. Until I could separate myself from the terror, could observe it from a distance like it belonged to someone else. Someone weaker. Someone who still believed she could come back from this unchanged.
That woman was gone.
I felt her dying in the darkness of this cell—the Merrilee who'd believed in redemption, who'd thought killing Hewes would somehow cleanse her, would let her return to Earth and slip back into the life she'd lost. That version of me had been naive. Stupid. She'd thought you could wade through blood and come out clean on the other side.
You couldn't.
I was accepting something fundamental about myself, something that made my stomach turn even as I embraced it. I was becoming capable of murder. Not in self-defense. Not in the heat of passion. But cold, calculated, premeditated murder. Somehow, someway, I would hunt Hewes through this hellhole of a city, and when I found him, I would kill him with my barehands if I had to. I would watch the light leave his eyes and feel nothing but satisfaction.
The thought should have horrified me. Maybe once it would have.
Now it just felt true.
The trembling in my hands was slowing. The panic was receding, not gone but contained, locked away where it couldn't interfere with what needed to be done. Something else was taking its place—something cold and sharp and utterly without mercy. I felt it settling into my bones like ice, hardening me from the inside out.
I thought about Ana and Sebastian, safe now, free. I'd come here thinking I was doing this for them—to earn my way back to them, to be worthy of seeing them again.
But that wasn't why anymore.
I was doing this because Declan Hewes had stolen years of my life. He'd broken something in me that would never be whole again, and if I was going to carry that weight for the rest of my life, then he was going to pay for putting it there.
Even if killing him added another weight. Even if it made me into something my siblings wouldn't recognize.
I wasn't seeking redemption anymore.
I was seeking vengeance.
Hewes thought I was finished. Thought I was worthless.
I'd show him exactly how wrong he was.
Even if it killed me.
Chapter 4
Ahrick
I felt the ship before I saw it—a vibration in the air that made the scrap metal walls of Fange City hum with anticipation. The descent was sloppy, too fast, the kind of landing that said the pilot either didn't care or was being forced down.
After Nansar and Chloe were rescued, there had been more Alliance ships patrolling the sky, their presence a constant reminder that someone, somewhere, still pretended to care about what happened in this hellhole. The patrols had made everyone nervous. Persico had kept his operations quieter, more contained. Even the fighting pits had seen fewer spectacles.
But in the past few days, those ships had left.
