Reagan had explained to all the squads the plan Jane and him had agreed to in the alley.
He hadn’t left the barracks field since returning, except once to relieve himself.
She was supposed to have appeared through that dooryesterday evening.
He couldn’t move, only hearing the instructions being relayed to any new patrollers arriving. There was so much tension in his body he could barely muster speech or breath.
Jane was the most important person in his life—and soon, in this estate. And yet he had agreed to an ambush that would risk her life to infiltrate an Order hideout. After a full night in the gelid wind, his teeth ground together. Reagan refused to dwell on the possibility that their plan might fail and that, once again, he would have no way to reach her.
But that would not happen. Jane would appear through that door at any moment. He knew it. He only had to wait.
He could feel Gwinifer’s scowl nearby, but at least his sister had the sense to keep her opinions to herself. He knew she found their plan reckless. That she would argue Jane was not expendable, not someone to risk in an ambush like this. He knew all of that, yet he also hadn’t been able to think of a way to convince her to come with him. She had been resolute about rescuing the captives she had seen.
It had shifted something inside her. He understood the need to act, much like when he had tracked the Wraiths invading the estate months ago. Just as he could not abandon his citizens, Jane could not abandon those captives. How could he ever fight against a trait in her that mirrored his own?
It was a good thing he had kept his focus on the door. Anyone else might have missed the infinitesimal shift, the faint shimmering tracing the outline of the wood.
He stopped breathing, mana flooding his veins as he reached for the handle.
Finn was halfway through saying it should be Jane’s side breaching when Reagan pulled the door open.
It was not the barracks.
In the span of a heartbeat, he assessed the scene. His vision tunnelled. Turned red. His body flooded with power he made no attempt to restrain.
Jane was pinned to the floor, shirtless and bleeding, beneath the Scion who guarded her in the human town. The same one Finn had influenced yesterday so Reagan could extract her. The one she had called Cahir.
The Scion straddled her, his expression twisted with anger. And lust. She struggled and raged against the hands pinning her wrists to the floor.
But as Cahir looked up, he locked eyes with Reagan at the threshold and froze. The Scion watched as Reagan’s lips peeled back from his teeth, probably feeling the torrent of mana invading the room.
The man’s face drained of all colour.
Reagan could scarcely recognise his own power warping the air across the field, but it thrummed, thrummed, thrummed. Like a storm readying to shatter the sky.
Reagan moved, a rising tide of power surging forward, the force slamming into the padded walls and ringing up into the white ceiling.
He would flay the Scion alive.
Before he had time to tear the scum from her, Cahir was thrown against the wall, limbs splayed, his neck craning back as though his spine might snap.
And thenshewas standing. Standing on her own two feet in a wide stance, hands outstretched towards the Scion.
It was then Reagan realised there was another power crowding his senses, thrumming through the air. It was cooler than his. Less electric. It smelled of his dreams.
It smelled ofJane.
Surprise warred with his wrath as he stepped towards her, sensing that same sweet access he had felt not long ago. Yet this was nothing like the faint prickle she had wielded before.
This was unleashing. This was her fully claiming the breadth of her access.
“I. Told. You.” Jane’s voice was hoarse, yet it carried over the ringing echo of her power. The Scion’s arm cracked. “To. Run.”
Jane’s legs wavered slightly, and Reagan became an unyielding wall at her back, incapable of stopping his mouth from curling at the pain she inflicted. He savoured it, that mighty power, as though it were his own. But it washerbreaking the Scion, burning him before all the squads gathered in the field. The vermin’s face flushed a furious red as he howled.
Gradually, Jane’s grunt of effort became a roar, the veins in her hands glowing so brightly Reagan could almost feel the burn of that release.
Yet Jane didn’t stop until she burned the Scion from the inside out, her wet hair plastered to her back. The air thickened, charged with her access. Reagan could see the exertion in the tremor of her limbs. Yet she kept going, kept bleeding the man until blood ran in rivulets from his nose, his mouth, his ears. Until the screams ceased, and his head sagged forward, his body collapsing in a heap at her feet.
