Kessler is on his back, two feet from us, eyes open. They’re all dead. All of Lucas’s soldiers are gone. The corridor we walked through is painted the red-black color of blood.
Eight Covenant operatives walk out of the smoke emanating from the far end of the junction. Hands at their sides. Claws still long.
And in the middle of them, striding through them like a woman crossing her own front hallway, is Lydia.
Untouched. Not a hair out of place.
The breath goes out of me in a hard exhale. “No. No, it can’t be.”
“Lydia.” Violet’s voice is shaking—with anger, not fear. “Lydia, what the fuck?”
Lydia tilts her head at us.
The smile that curves her mouth is one I have never seen her wear. Not at the breakfast table, not in the corridors, not at the welcome dinner. It is tight, clean, almost amused, and it goes through my chest like a stone through a thin sheet of ice.
No. No, it can’t be.
Lydia is one of them!
The bond pulses against my ribs so hard, I sway.
Lucas.
His fury rolls back at me through the link, hot enough that the mark at my collarbone burns where the necklace hits it.
Suddenly, Violet moves.
She launches off the wall, straight at Lydia. All the magic she has never learned how to use breaks out of her at once, her hands lit up blue, her teeth bared, the ends of her hair lifting at her shoulders.
“You backstabbing bitch!” she screams. “Where’s my mother?”
Three operatives are on her before she gets close.
She fights them. Of course she does—her mother is somewhere in this building, and one of her best friends is up against a wall behind her.
Two of the shifters head in my direction. I kick the one who gets to me first, but he grabs my leg and twists. A punch from the other guy knocks me against the wall. I try to summon my wolf, but the curse mark begins to burn so violently that I can’t breathe. I claw at my own throat.
“Sienna!” Violet looks at me over her shoulder, and I gesture with my hand that I’m choking.
“Go!” I manage to yell to her.
She turns back around, facing the enemy. The magic at her hands flares, rattling the strip lights overhead. Glass cracks somewhere in the corridor. One of the operatives goes flying backward into the concrete wall hard enough that an audible crack comes from his body upon impact. Another grabs Violet by the throat, and she sinks her teeth into his forearm until he howls.
It takes three of them to bring her down.
“Darius is going to gut you,” Violet snarls on the floor as a knee drives into her back. “My mother is going to gut you. If they don’t get to you first, I will.”
Lydia laughs. The sound of it runs down the corridor like cold water.
“Your mother…” she repeats, savoring it. “Your mother was the smart one, Violet. She recognized me when we met at Silvercrest. Twenty years on, she still remembered my face.”
Violet’s struggle stops. Her head jerks up off the concrete floor. “What are you talking about?”
Lydia crouches in front of her. She is patient about it. She tucks a strand of Violet’s hair behind her ear.
“When your filthy little hybrid community was being slaughtered,” she murmurs, “my mentor brought me to watch. I was nine. We have been around longer than you know, sweet girl. Your downfall. Your exile. We’ve been part of it all, for generations.”
The color goes out of Violet’s face.
