Page 65

Riley

M ain Street Station loomed ahead—its broken clock barely visible through the haze of smoke. I kept my eyes focused and forward, refusing to look at the kids trailing beside me, their small hands clutching at whatever they could carry. Didn’t let my eyes linger on the adults, their faces blank with shock. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered right now.

Evacuate the civilians, reach the station, and stay alive. That was the plan. Those were my orders.

Stay alive.

For Yasmin, for our son, for her.

For her.

A crackle of electricity made me pause and a sharp blue light flickered against the side of a high-rise. The holographic screen flickered to life against the cracked wall, and a cold stream of panic settled in my veins.

Amaia.

She was on her knees, hair matted with ash colored sweat streaked down her face. I would not panic. Not yet. Her eyes—they still burned. That fire in her was still alive. Good . That was good.

“A villain speech, how original,” she said, the force in her voice present despite Ronan lingering over her, fingers wrapped in her hair.

“No. Not a villain—a victor.” Ronan’s smile was cold, lacking emotion—it reminded me of Seth’s. It was mechanical, more machine than man. Like they practiced it every morning, to make sure they fit in. “I think you’d appreciate understanding what you’re up against, learning all the facts, making sure that the people you care for won’t suffer.” The word suffer slithered out, mocking.

Amaia straightened, shoulders squared against the weight of his grip. I gritted my teeth, the instinct to run to her screaming in my bones. It wasn’t simple. It never was. I had to stay alive—she’d want me to stay alive.

My mind raced. Pieces clicked together. Name the next one after me. She knew. Fury bubbled in my veins. Hot. Suffocating.

“Let us give them all a show. Say hi to the camera, it’s important they understand exactly what happens when you stand against progress. Evolution.” He held out his hand, and Malachai stepped forward, placing a knife in his palm. The camera zoomed in as Ronan dragged the blade lightly across her throat. A thin line of blood appeared, and my chest clenched so tight I thought I’d stop breathing.

Amaia didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. She just stared up at him with that defiant tilt to her head, offering him more real-estate, daring him to do his worst.

Reina made a small, strangled sound as she moved her horse to block the view from some of the younger children. “What’s happening?” she whispered. “What is he?—”

“Don’t you know, this is all history in the making?” Ronan circled her like prey. “The onset of the new beginning. Future generations will thank us for setting them up for success. You said it yourself, one unit, right? With Covert having hold in the other territories, we eliminate what I like to call, inefficiencies. No more fractured leadership, no more squabbles over resources. Everything is structured, centralized. Controlled. Covert Province becomes the heart of it all—a beacon of progress, of strength. The weak don’t get a say in that. Survival belongs to those who take it, who can lead, adapt. You and I understand each other. Both willing to die for what we believe in. It’s the reason I refused to doubt you. It would have been dangerous to do so.”

“He’s making an example of her. Showing what happens if you dare dissent,” I said, the words coming out in a growl.

I felt Alexiares stare and refused to face it—that undercurrent of panic, of rage he barely held in check. He would break, and if he broke, I feared I would too. For her, it was so easy to.

Amaia’s eyes trailed every inch of Ronan’s face, studied every line, every freckle—then burst out laughing. “Wow. All this time, I thought you were just preaching bullshit, saying what you thought people wanted to hear. But you actually believe in what you’re doing, don’t you? You think this is for the greater good? Hurting people, killing people, that’s your legacy. You don’t get to rewrite history just because you don’t like how it’ll make you look.”

The screen flickered as Malachai stepped into frame. His arm lashed out, the crack of his strike louder than a whip through the air. Her head snapped to the side, hair flying, but she didn’t fall.

She didn’t even stagger.

Amaia smiled, blood staining her teeth, her lip bulging to a painful swell. “I truly pity the fool. I’m not sure what’s worse, preaching harmful rhetoric to climb an ego boosting social ladder or believing the whack job shit that comes out of your mouth?”

She held all the bite in the world with her tone, but I caught it—the slip in her speech pattern, the glimmer of sorrow in her eyes, the faint snarl of her bruised and battered lip. She was afraid. More than afraid, Amaia was terrified. Her right hand fell to her waist, tracing over where she’d been stabbed in the last war—I hadn’t been able to help her then either.

“I mean,” she continued, her jaw moving at an awkward angle. “All this science and focus on having the greatest minds, and you wouldn’t comprehend the data if it slapped you in the fucking face and grabbed you by the balls. Let me guess, anything you don’t agree with is a falsity, right? A biased fact? Facts can’t be biased, Ronan. They’re just facts. And at the end of the day, we are, genetically speaking, 99.9 percent identical. Our roots, magic or not, are tangled together in the same evolutionary soil. That is not an opinion, Ronan, that is molecular truth. We are all the same. What you’re doing out here is playing God, disrupting nature’s patterns. Destroying order, not restoring it.”

Malachai struck her again. “Shut your mouth.”

“No,” Ronan said with a smirk. “Let her continue.”

This was a public service announcement. He wanted the world to watch. To see how untouchable he was and how unattainable freedom from his reach would be. The great Amaia Bennett. I had no doubt this was being displayed throughout Covert Province as a whole.

“What you’ve done with your power disgusts me.”

Ronan glanced at with more than subtle intrigue—amusement. “You would do it differently? Better?”

“I have done it better.” Amaia spit into his face, bloodied saliva dripped down his chin. She locked eyes with the camera. “If you’re watching this, the people you call Outsiders , they’ll be welcome in Salem Territory, Transient Nation, and The Expanse. Granted immediate citizenship. Wherever they want. One unit, one compound. But the rest of you fuckers,”—a laugh. A stale one at that. “I hope you burn in hell.”

“Reina? Are you watching dear?” Ronan’s voice was calm as he pressed the knife deeper into her throat, the line forming no longer thin, now threatening to bleed her dry.

Soft whimpers spilled out between Reina’s sobs. She sat frozen atop her horse, tears streaking down her face. Her mouth opened and then closed, like she wanted to shout but couldn’t. All the words she’d wanted to say but the horror of it all muting her.

“My greatest disappointment,” Ronan said, his tone cruel and cutting. How dare he. How dare he guilt her with this! “Oh, how I’d ached for a better reunion. I wished better for you. For you both, Hunter . Do you see what happens when you’re too loud? More particularly, when you’re wrong.”

Amaia closed her eyes.

No .

Get up. Don’t you dare—don’t you dare give up!

I was on autopilot, body stepping forward out of instinct. Alexiares’s hand caught me, holding me with the understanding of what was about to happen. “Don’t,” he mumbled.

Not to me. To her.

The fire flickered. It started in her eyes. In an instant, she erupted.

Flames encased her, pouring from her as its own living, breathing thing. The image seared itself into my mind. With each blink, she was there. Her scream thundered from building to building, echoing the agonizing, haunting sound of self-destruction.

It mingled with Ronan’s startled shout, his confidence crumbling to the panic of no longer having the control. That flicker of terror when he realized she was more than he bargained for, more than he was equipped to beat, would’ve been honeysuckle sweet under different circumstances. The knife at her throat was useless now, hovered there, stuck.

Her screams stopped as she fell to her knees, the light in her eyes dimming, body bowing. A marionette puppet whose strings had been severed. She wasn’t gone. Not yet—not entirely.

I knew what she was doing. Understood it all too clearly. She wasn’t giving up. She was slipping into that other place, that hollow space in her mind, so she could let go. Because she had to. She had to release her power, had to let it consume her, and she couldn’t do that—not if she still held on to the love she had for us.

There was no goodbye. Not in this family. Not between us.

Four eternal seconds passed between the moment Ronan’s blade kissed her throat and the moment she gave herself to the flames. Four seconds, and everything had changed.

“She’s burning out,” Alexiares said, panic bleeding into every word. “We have to help her.”

The words snapped me into action. I didn’t think. I just moved, shoving past him, leaving the civilians behind. They’d have to make it on their own now. She needed me.

Amaia needed me.

The first explosion was small. A burst of her flames that struck the ground a few feet away. The next was closer, more violent. I grabbed Alexiares as a blast nearly took him out, hauling him back with me, the earth turning soft underneath us to cushion the fall.

He dragged me up, but it didn’t matter. The old gas lines were already erupting, one after another, bursting in flashes of heat and light around us. It was too late. I knew it. My heart screamed otherwise, clinging to denial with a ferocity that left my chest aching. Denial was sweet, so damn sweet. It whispered that she might make it. That if I kept watching the screen, I wouldn’t see her die.

“I. Can. Not. Fail. Not again,” I muttered, accepting my new mission, the one I could control. The one she’d always held me to. If I could not protect her, then I had to protect them. One last mission, a final one signed off in her blood. “We won’t … we can’t. The gas lines … It’s her. We have to … we have to stay here. Because if she kills one of us before she goes down, she won’t survive it. She’d never forgive herself.”

“She has to survive for me to give a shit what she wants first!” Alexiares roared back, his voice raw with anguish.

I couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t face the grief mirrored in his eyes. My focus stayed locked on the screen. Amaia stood there, still burning. The fire moved like it was alive, licking at her skin, weaving through her hair, but it didn’t consume her. Her movements were slow, deliberate, as she dragged herself to a chair in the center of the room, pulled herself up, then turned toward Ronan.

He scrambled back, his body trembling with an unnatural frailty, yet his eyes burned with unrelenting hatred. The guards around him were lifeless, their weapons scattered and useless. Malachai had vanished. A cockroach scurrying from the light. I knew he was out there somewhere, saving his own skin.

The camera caught the moment she stepped forward—staggered forward. Even through the haze of fire and smoke, I swear I heard her voice.

“I’m sorry,” she cried.

The camera fell, clattering to the ground. The angle shifted, capturing Ronan on his back, his face upturned, the reflection of her flames filling his wide, horrified eyes.

“Run! The street … It’s gonna blow!” Voices rang out behind me, panicked and desperate as they came running, searching for us.

I spun, spotting Tomás, Hunter, and Serenity racing toward us. The others trailing behind them. Tomoe, Reina, Millie. They’d followed us, their horses weaving through the wreckage.

A door creaked open somewhere—offscreen. Amaia’s fire whooshing to chase after oxygen. There was the shuffle of movement. Panic in the room.

I turned back just as the ground beneath us erupted.

The blast tore through the world, a wave of searing heat and thunder that ripped me off my feet. I hit the ground hard, my ears ringing, the air knocked from my lungs.

The screen went black.

Our shield shattered.

And with it, everything fell apart.

Soldiers poured through the breach, their shouts mixing with the chaos. Grenades soared, each burst of magic erupting in flashes of blinding light. The civilians we’d been evacuating—the children—they were caught in the storm, their cries lost in the relentless crossfire.

But I couldn’t process it. Couldn’t move.

Amaia was everywhere. Her flames, her scream, her face burned into the inside of my skull.