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She spun around, her hand flying to her still heart.

Valden stepped out of the shadows at the end of the corridor. Smiling. “I thought I taught you better than to eavesdrop,” he purred, walking toward her.

“Y-yes, Master,” she said, her voice quiet but steady. Though I felt the terror flooding her veins. “You don’t want to do this.”

“Oh, but I do,” he said. “I really, really do.”

She reached behind to her waist in a blur, pulled out a silver dagger, and lunged, feinting left. Aiming for the gap in his defense. But she never made contact. A striking white light exploded from the air beside her. A hand, carved from marble and heat, clamped around her throat and lifted her off her feet.

Serion held her suspended in the air. His wings were unfurled, filling the corridor and blocking the exit. She clawed at his hand, her legs kicking uselessly. The heat of his grip was searing her skin. She couldn’t breathe.

“Well,” he said, looking at her with the detached interest of a biologist examining a specimen, “we were looking for the source.” He squeezed, and I felt her windpipe strain. “And the source came straight to us.”

The scene shifted. A jagged cut in time.

The laboratory. The smell of ozone and burned flesh. We were strapped to a steel table. Couldn’t move. Celestial chains, burning like white-hot wires, held our wrists and ankles. Serion stood over us with a syringe, the needle long and terrifyingly thick.

“Don’t.” Lysanthe’s voice was a wreck, shredded by hours of screaming. “P-please. Just kill me.”

“Death is a waste,” he said. “We need the scream, little vampire.”

He inserted the needle. The pain was white. Absolute. Spiritual. He was drawing out her memories—her love for Cassia, her fear—and twisting them into liquid agony. I felt her soul ripping. The essence leaving her body, siphoned into the glass vial.

Valden watched from the corner. He held the silver ring, looking impatient. “Is it enough?”

“Almost.” Serion leaned close to her ear. “Think of her,” he whispered. “Think of your friend. Think of how she failed you.”

Lysanthe tried to close her mind. Tried to block him out. But…the pain forced the image of Cassia to the surface. “Cassie…” she whimpered.

He smiled and drew the plunger back.

The world turned gray. Then black. The last thing she felt was the table’s cold steel against her back and the crushing, overwhelming realization that her death would be the weapon used to destroy the person she loved the most.

As the connection severed, I gasped, stumbling back from the slab. The reality of the morgue rushed back in—the cold, the hum of the lights, and the smell of death. The silence in the room was absolute, heavier than the stone walls. I doubled over and retched dryly, my hands gripping my knees. The taste of her agony was thick in my mouth.

I looked up.

Cassia still stood exactly where I had left her, but the surrounding air was vibrating. Shadows were whipping around her ankles in a frenzy, a chaotic storm that seemed to originate from her skin. Her eyes were still black voids. Her face was still streaked with blood. But her expression was no longer grief.

It was annihilation.

“Cassia,” I whispered, straightening. My heart felt as if it had been cleaved in two. I wanted to go to her. To hold her. To apologize. To burn the world down for her. “I am so sorry.”

She looked at me, and the void in her eyes seemed to expand, swallowing me whole. The word was quiet. “Leave.”

“Cassia,” I said, taking a step toward her, “I am not leaving you like this. We will find them. We will—”

“LEAVE!”

Her roar wasn’t a human sound. It was the sound of a gate breaking open. A shockwave of pure kinetic force erupting from her body.

It hit me like a freight train. I was lifted off my feet and thrown backward through the air. I crashed through the morgue’s heavy double doors, the wood splintering as I was propelled through. I flew across the corridor and smashed through the exterior window. Glass exploded outward. I hit the alley’s stone pavement with a bone-jarring impact. Pain flared in my shoulder and hip.

I lay there, on the cold and wet asphalt, for a moment, staring up at the shattered window three stories above. Rain had fallen, cold and indifferent.

She had thrown me out. Rejected me. Embraced the monster.

I groaned, forcing myself to sit up. My healing factor was already taking care of the bruises and the broken bones, but the ache in my chest would not heal.