To, K,
They’re trying to create another like my son.
Ever since you took him and sent him back...he’s different.
His crib keeps smoking. His bathwater keeps boiling.
I’m trying to hide it from the staff, but he’s getting worse.
There are rumours that the Eastern Crucible has been reopened.
And not for Brimstone reactors.
You need to shut them down.
Meilin and I are trapped and can’t get out, but Wen can be trusted. If you get this message, please find a way to destroy it.
And I’ll...I’ll find a way to stop my son.
Jin.
Not save. Not help. Stop.
Did that mean my father was planning on killing me?
What if the one man who was meant to love me unconditionally decided I was too dangerous to stay alive?
But if he believed that, why had he given me a lifeline beyond his grave? Why give me access to Sovereign Retrieval? Who was he writing to?
What the fuck is going on in that mountain?!
The fire simmering in my chest grew hotter. I didn’t like so many unanswered questions. I didn’t like my past overshadowing my future, all while my present was still so unknown.
Rook shifted, her foot sneaking under the blankets to find me in her sleep.
The bond between us tugged, her feelings feathering into me.
Fear and worry, love and loyalty.
She frowned as if her dreams turned to nightmares. Nightmares full of loss and pain and panic.
I went to gather her in my arms, but...
I suffered the same feelings.
The same clawing dread.
Something was waiting in that mountain.
I needed to go. Had to find out. But...I didn’t want to risk hurting her.
She’d already seen far too much death thanks to me.
And if the note was true. If Lao Li’s ramblings weren’t pure madness...that meant my hands would be coated in blood before I was through.
Leaning over her, I brushed my lips over her cool cheek. “I refuse to put you in danger, little ice heart. Not now.”
Not now, when losing her would slaughter me.
If I let my vengeance be the reason she got hurt. If I took her with me into certain carnage and she suffered because of me...
I’ll never forgive myself.
Slipping out of bed, I padded silently through the darkness to the wardrobe.
I didn’t bother showering. I wanted to keep her on my skin—to use her scent as a way to control myself while we were apart. Pulling on my familiar black uniform and black boots, I wished I had a gun or two.
Then again, I was used to knives. I’d taken countless lives with a blade.
Palming a few daggers that I’d been given as a child—heirlooms with dragon-carved handles—I wedged them into my waistband. At least, wearing all black, bloodstains wouldn’t show if I cut someone’s throat tonight.
Whisper prowled toward me, his whiskers flaring as if tasting my burning.
Ducking to my haunches, I grabbed his cheeks. “Once again, I’m going to ask you to protect her.” Pressing my forehead to his, I stayed there for a moment before standing and stalking to the door. “Don’t leave her side.”
I paused on the threshold, my eyes catching Whisper’s as he went to stand guard over a sleeping Rook.
Rook continued to snooze safely.
My hands balled with the vicious need to keep her that way.
The urge to defend her was visceral—an instinct carved deep into my bones. My only purpose was to protect her—even from myself, which meant I would clean up my messes so she no longer had to suffer.
With one last look, I told myself I would return before she woke.
I was wrong.
Chapter Sixty-Three
I SQUATTED IN THE DARK LIKE A DEMON.
Ahead, the cave system of the Eastern Crucible sulked in the night. I’d walked here after trying to figure out how to drive Wen’s jeep—only to give up when the grinding gears threatened to tell everyone in Ashfall Cliff that I was up to no good.
Then again, a vehicle wouldn’t have worked.
It’d taken three hours of mountaineering to get here. The forest was almost impassable; the cliff edges narrow and steep. I’d memorised my father’s map but almost got lost a few times, thanks to the rugged terrain doing its best to turn me back. I doubted the villagers would’ve gone this way while looking for their lost ones—purely because of the risks.
I clenched against the inferno fighting to get free.
One hundred and eighty minutes away from Rook, yet the burning in my blood was unbearable. The fire hated being separated from her. It acted like a separate entity—a parasite slowly vampirising my soul the longer I was away from the one person who kept me sane.
Focus.
On the horizon, the moon glimmered brightly. Dawn was still hours away and the croaks of frogs and night insects rang in my ears.
I studied the cave’s entrance. Half-collapsed and covered in vines, it looked abandoned—just like the site notice on my father’s map. A rusted, broken fence hung on rotten, wooden posts—the metal cut in the centre and rolled aside as if explorers had ignored the signs to keep out. A weather-beaten sign with the Brimstone logo had been torn off the fence and left to be swallowed by moss against a tree.
Everything about this place looked forgotten and unwanted, yet...the air tasted wrong.
The fire kept growing, snarling at something I couldn’t see.
The faintest coil of cigarette smoke hit my nose as two men exited the mountain’s mouth.
One of them smacked aside a low branch; the other kicked aside a weed. The low hum of conversation came as they settled onto two fallen rocks by the cave’s entrance, pulled out a bottle and some packaged food from their coats, and proceeded to have a midnight snack.
The fire in me snarled.
The violence that’d always been a part of me—the part that Rook had done her best to tame—sprang free with claws and fury.
A lamenting moan hung on the breeze, whipping my head to the side. It sounded exactly like Lao Li had said—like the mountain was screaming.
I moved before I could stop myself.
Leaving my spot in the trees, I marched directly toward the two men sharing their starlit feast. Why were they here? Why guard an abandoned geothermal site in the middle of the night? Even if it was still operated by Brimstone—some off-the-books reactor or some other business experiment—it didn’t explain why guards were needed at this time.
It took an embarrassingly long moment for them to spy me, chatting quietly and working their way through their food. I cut through the broken fence and drew to a stop.
The one who’d been smoking the cigarette froze. Choking on a mouthful, he launched to his feet, knocked over his bottle, and whipped a gun from his holster.
“Stop right there!” His Mandarin was short and choppy, revealing he wasn’t from around here. “Who the hell are you?”
“Let me in.” I crossed my arms, palming the dagger hilts in my waistband.
The other man stood slowly, looking me up and down with a laugh. “You want in? You think you can wander here in the dead of night and—”
“I’m the rightful ruler of Brimstone Industries.” Leaning forward, I smiled thinly. “I’m Yunhui Luxin. Let. Me. In.”
They shot each other a look.
I gave them a few seconds.
A single minute to prove they were innocent and I didn’t have to kill them.
But they ruined it by pointing their guns at my head and—
I swooped forward, feinted to the side, and plunged a dagger into the closest guard’s jugular before spinning and slashing the neck of the other. All those nights of murdering eager little assassins came in handy as I dispatched them without a sound.
