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Darien had been doing well, all things considered. He’d almost made it to the doors of the club when a Surge swept into his mind, claiming him with such force that he nearly fell on his ass.

The voices in the club swelled to a garbled roar. Lights, colors, and sounds fused together, growing and echoing at a blaring volume. It felt like he was being consumed, like many hands were peeling his flesh off his bones, cracking his skull open and turning his brains inside out.

Surges were always bad, no matter how severe or mild. But this—

Darien had lost his bearings. He couldn’t remember where the doors were, and there were too many people, too many sounds. The blood in his veins was acid, and the need to hit and kill took hold of his thoughts, turning his hands into tight fists and his lungs into a suffocated pulp.

He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.

Pushing through the crowds, he tried to find composure, but the harder he tried to suppress the Surge, the worse it became. People scrambled to get out of his way, looking downright terrified of him. He didn’t blame them; he was terrified of himself.

He had just spotted the neon EXIT sign glowing above a door that led into the alley when a memory swooped into his mind—

“He’s telling his teachers at that fucking school that he wants to work for the law when he grows up.” Standing in the kitchen of the penthouse in Angelthene’s North End, Randal crumpled Darien’s homework into a ball, squeezing it with a scarred fist.

A thirteen-year-old Darien was standing outside his bedroom door, peering down the hallway, watching when he knew he shouldn’t. Ivyana was sitting at the kitchen table, Soot curled up in her lap. She was choking down the last of her supper, finishing every bite on her plate, just like she was told. She kept her head down the whole time, pretending not to listen to her parents. Darien could hear her heart racing from here.

Their mother stood across from Randal, arms crossed, whole body stiff as she tried to reason with her husband. “He's young, Randal.” Her voice shook. “He'll grow out of it.”

“He'd better.” Randal pointed a finger in her face. “You make damn sure that idea is wiped out of his feeble mind, Em, or I’ll beat it out of him. You got that?”

Elsie ducked her head, her waves of reddish-brown hair concealing her face from Darien’s view. “Yes, Randal.”

“You know what?” Those eyes looked like they were glowing. “I’m going to beat it out of him right now.” Boots pounded as he stomped out of the kitchen, throwing the ball of homework at the wall. Clenching his fists at his sides, he stalked down the hallway, picking up his pace as soon as he caught sight of Darien, black consuming those hateful eyes.

Darien’s stomach churned as he watched his mother sprint after her husband, nearly falling as her socked feet slipped on the spotless floors.

“Randal!” Elsie called, voice shaking. “Randal, please—leave him alone. He’s just a boy—”

Randal backhanded her across the face. She rebounded off the wall before crumpling to the floor, clutching her flaming cheek.

Darien’s nostrils flared, hands curling into tight fists at his sides. The fight-or-flight response sweeping through his body left his heart pounding, but the rage he felt for his father drowned it out. Chin high, he stood firm, refusing to back down.

Ivy was closing her eyes, clutching Soot to her chest. Rocking back and forth in her chair, probably wishing she could teleport away from here, just like she always told Darien in the quiet of the night, when they hid together under blankets and sheets, the glow of a flashlight their only company.

It was the pain his mother and sister were feeling that protected him from registering his own as his father dragged him into his room by the elbow, where he let loose with his fists and belt.

Darien didn’t make one sound the whole time his father beat him, not even when the belt cut into the skin of his back, leaving scars that would last for the rest of his horribly long life.

Not a single sound.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Darien muttered, squeezing his head in his hands as he burst through the side door of the Advocate and staggered into the alley, boots splashing in puddles that smelled like piss, the mercury-vapor lights shooting into his eyes. “Fuck—I can’t take it anymore!”

“Everything okay?” Malakai’s voice was faint. The Reaper shrugged away from where he was leaning against the graffitied wall, hands in the pockets of his black leather jacket. Sylvan and Valen, who were smoking at his side, butted out their cigarettes and followed Malakai.

Footsteps chased him down the alley, but he couldn’t catch his breath. The world kept spinning, and the sounds kept swelling, loud and invasive. He felt like he could hear and see and smell everything in the universe—the thumping of the music in the club, the tires of passing cars humming on the road out front, the freshly pressed clothes in the laundromat down the street, the rushing of the Angelthene River, the honking of car horns on bridges miles away, the cawing of gulls over the ocean, the smell of fresh snow on faraway mountain peaks, the bursting of stars in distant galaxies—

“Darien?”

“What’s wrong with him?”

The voices got louder. Tenser.

Head in his hands, Darien paced in the alley, stepping on his own boots. The air reeked of garbage and liquor and piss and vomit and burnt rubber and stagnant water and—fuck, when would it end?

“He okay?”