God, the agony in my shoulder was nothing.

Nothing.

I’d never felt such pain. Such raging, roaring fury.

It threatened to shatter my bones.

It felt as if lightning gathered inside me.

The bond swelled, scorched, then tore at the seams.

The tether binding me to Lucien became murderous. I felt him pulling. Summoning me, siphoning the cold right out of me, falling into a cyclone of power.

The room warped as frost burst free with jagged faultlines, making Whisper leap off the bed.

“Lucien?” I looked wildly for him, gasping and quaking as excruciating agony kept building, building.

Ice crackled over my ribs, sinking its silver tendrils directly into my heart.

Flickers of despair fed down the bond, clashing with snowy suffocation.

I slipped into his mind.

I saw from behind his eyes—

Surrounded by men. Guns all trained on him. A cave system that reeked of death. His heart incinerated. His humanity disintegrated. He surrendered to the fire and—

“No!”

Whisper let loose a thunderous snarl as if he felt what I did. Felt that Lucien was only moments away from total annihilation.

Why wasn’t he here?

Where did he go?!

The tether in my heart yanked violently. The connection between us went blinding. Fire so hot it burned my blood. Frost so thick it turned the room white.

Prehistoric cold threatened to shatter my spine, answering the breaking in Lucien.

It wanted me to break with him.

It wanted...me.

Throwing the blankets off, I flung myself out of bed. A giant snowflake appeared beneath my feet as the temperature plummeted. The air glittered with extinction—

A great cloud of roaring fire. No longer human. Just power. The mountain trembled and sky split.

“LUCIEN!”

The bond jerked—

then detonated.

Winter swarmed me. The rafters groaned as lightning forked inside.

He tipped his head to the sky. The fire didn’t consume him...it crowned him. His wrath turned tectonic—

A shockwave of his hate punched through me, shattering the ice’s hold. Gasping, I flung myself toward the wardrobe, hauled on the closest clothes, and fled.

Chapter Sixty-Five

SUMMONING HELL WAS AS EASY AS breathing.

The fire stole everything, delivering catastrophic power in return. I choked on blood as my organs turned to ash. I suffocated on air as my body broke beneath the weight of pure anarchy.

All the rage I’d nursed since I was nine years old. Every wish for vengeance. Every promise of revenge. It fed the fire until there was nothing left.

I would never be able to undo this.

Never be able to stop the flames feeding off my feelings—growing stronger with every surge of horror and terror and hate.

I screamed as a concussive blast shot out of me in a perfect sphere of incandescent force. Air ignited. Stone exploded. The cavern’s ceiling blew apart with a shower of molten debris. Flames punched through solid rock, carving a chimney straight to the surface.

My heart caved in with guilt.

Rook.

I didn’t know if leaving her had triggered this breaking or if this was always my fate.

Was she okay?

I’d thought—when she said we might be the key to our survival—that we’d be fine as long as we both existed...but what if it was a proximity thing?

What if I’d just condemned her to—

The guards opened fire.

Turning my back on them, I cradled the little girl in my arms, protecting her from the bullets. Sharp pain tore through my back but...my flesh switched to smoke, allowing pure metal to soar through.

Bullets thudded into the little girl instead.

The girl I was trying to protect.

The girl they’d tortured and killed.

Fire twisted into a vortex, drawing deep into my heart like a planet about to become a blackhole. Every molecule of heat, every thread of anger, every splinter of grief and helplessness and rage, rage, rage gathered into a crushing supernova.

Oxygen bent toward me.

Pebbles danced by my boots.

I coughed up another mouthful of blood as my marrow charred. The power took everything, killing me to keep a promise. A promise to make everyone pay.

The guards kept firing—muzzles flashing, sulphur rising—but the sound warped and slowed as if I controlled time itself. My vision fractured with every bullet. Stalactites dripped like candle wax.

And only once they’d run out of ammunition did I turn to face them.

My arms tightened around the dead girl as I glowered at the men who’d done this.

She was hungry?

Well, so the fuck was I.

Absolutely starving for retribution.

All it took was a thought.

The supernova inside my chest collapsed. Reversed. Boomed.

They didn’t just burn—they vanished. Reduced to carbon shadows and gone.

I summoned hell and hell answered and the fire targeted my mind in payment.

Every heartbeat cost me something.

A name.

A memory.

The pieces that kept me human. The memories I treasured and the moments with Rook all blurred. My childhood shrivelled like burning photographs, erasing my past, deleting the man I’d been.

Staggering backward, I almost dropped the girl as my tendons broke, one by one. My pulse thudded all wrong. My heart fought to keep beating.

The fire was no longer my enemy but my weapon. And mere mortal flesh didn’t stand a chance of containing its wrath.

This was the price.

If I kept going—

There would be nothing left of me.

But if I stopped—

There would be nothing left of them.

Screams hit my ears.

I ran.

The ground ruptured beneath my boots. The earth rumbled, lending me its unimaginable fury as my gaze landed on the woman, man, and newborn. The emaciated panther had collapsed close by, its eyes closed.

All around them fire licked at rancid hay, and stagnant water boiled in the troughs, yet they remained unharmed. She struggled to sit upright, cradling her baby close, yet she didn’t seem afraid of me, didn’t seem shocked by what I’d done.

And why would she.

She was like me.

Bred and harvested, created and farmed.

Holding the little girl tight, I bolted up the pathway—leaping over roughly-hewn stairs and careening around corners as fire feasted on me.

It found my bloodlust. It liked it. It accepted yet another piece of my soul in return for power great enough to unmake the world.

Smoky ember wings erupted from my back, granting inhuman speed as I tore through the mountain.

Chapter Sixty-Six

BRANCHES TORE AT MY ARMS. ROOTS lunged for my ankles.

I didn’t notice or care.

The cold turned into my enemy as I bolted.

All I could think about, all I could focus on, was finding Lucien before it was too late.

Why had he left?

How long did we have?

Didn’t he understand we had to stay close? That distance was killing us? That the longer we spent apart, the worse we would become until our bodies broke?

Run!

I didn’t have much time.

He didn’t have much time—

I clawed at my chest as another icicle stabbed my heart with its icy, awful dagger.

Running hurt. Breathing hurt. I left a trail of frost with every footfall.

I left via the back gate in the Whispering Dragon wall. I didn’t tell Dillon. I didn’t have time. But I left a trail for him to find us, coating the world in white as I ran and ran and ran.

The bond inside me was pulling, tugging, jerking.

Snippets of Lucien kept spilling into my head.

A dead child. A newborn baby. A slaughter.