Pollock takes one slow step inside.
The beast is back. His eyes are alight with the primal fury that radiates off him. A presence heavy enough to press against my chest. My own animal answers instantly—claws itching beneath my skin once again, heat coiling low, that lure to go to him compelling, but I shut it down.
I recall my last night among my sisters. The nave. Their faces. The years I kneeled beside them in worship, and the seconds it took to cut each one down. Their whimpers. Their sobs. Their pleas for mercy. For those we slaughtered at the end, the ones who were left on the ground and awaited death.
He opens his mouth, but I cut him off.
“You.” I lift one blade and level it at him, the point steady, unwavering. “You are fucking dead to me. I will watch your corpse bleed out on this godforsaken floor before I ever let you invade my mind again.”
The words rip out of me, sharp and unfiltered.
“Calm yours?—”
“How dare you,” I snarl at him. “Meddle in my thoughts. Trespass through my dreams. Steal into memories you had no business seeing. And while I slept too?—”
“I was only trying to help.”
“Help?” The word is laced with venom and almost a laugh. My grip tightens on the hilt.
“Yes. I needed to know what you’ve been through, so I could understand how they manipulated your thoughts all those years. Your Order?—”
Orán stiffens. “You dug into her thoughts while she slept?” Horror bleeds into his voice, raw and unmasked.
Pollock strides forward, unrepentant, and I shift instantly—weight on the balls of my feet, blades angled for a kill strike.
“Don’t act so appalled,” he snaps. “I needed to know what kind of evil we were dealing with, and the only way to do that was to see her past. How they shaped her. How that man molded her to his purpose.”
“Eridessa, I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” Orán says.
“That’s no fucking excuse.” I don’t look at him. My eyes never leave Pollock. “You bound me. You invited him here. You gave him permission to crawl through my mind in the forest.”
“I didn’t invite him,” Orán fires back. “He followed your scent. I played no part in that. Whatever is happening to you both was not my doing.”
Pollock strides forward until he stands between us, shoulders squared. “If you want someone to blame, Eri, blame me. Not him.”
My laugh is cold. “Oh, I do.”
“I only allowed him to influence you in your room and in the woods to bring you back,” Orán says, urgency breaking through his restraint. “You weren’t in your right mind. We were afraid you’d hurt yourself—or disappear. It isn’t safe beyond these woods. You don’t yet know what walks this world now.”
He moves closer, and his gaze finds mine over Pollock's shoulders, and his eyes plead for understanding.
“And I didn’t know what the power I shared with you could do. I didn’t understand what was happening to you.”
Silence stretches between us—tight, fragile, one wrong move from shattering.
I raise my blades a fraction higher. “And yet,” I say quietly, “you both still made the choice for me.”
Power floods over me, and a sense of calm invades, simmering my rage. Pollock. His attempt to subdue me.
A fierce growl tears from my chest.
“Don’t you dare try to control me, Serpent.” I unleash the power in my own veins—not wild, not chaotic, but honed. Forged into place with surgical clarity. The beast coils tight beneath my skin, snarling, begging to be let out. I use her strength, her senses, and nothing more as I move.
Pollock strides forward at the same instant I do. He rips a useless lamp from the side table as I strike. Blade meets glass and explodes between us, shards raining down like shrapnel. I twist through it, bare feet sliding over hardwood, already repositioning.
He lunges.
I’m gone.
