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Reina

T he world was noise and silence all at once. The explosion swallowed everything, all concepts of sound, touch, taste . The ringing … the ringing in my ears wouldn’t stop. Stop. Please. Make it stop. My hands flew to my ears, covering them for protection. The deafening roar tuning with a sharpness that might carve through my skull.

I hit the ground hard, the air stolen from me, my vision splintering into shards. Pain erupted in my shoulder, my ribs, my hands scraped raw against the asphalt. My horse was gone. Bolted—or dead. Who the heck knew? I couldn’t think.

What happened ?

I couldn’t seem to remember what led up to this moment in time. Oh, my God.

The ground shook beneath me, rippling as though it might split apart. Distant screams muffled under the weight of the ringing. The capitol building was gone. Blown apart. Shattered into dust and fire.

Amaia.

My stomach twisted. The image of her kneeling, fire pouring from her like a living thing, burned behind my eyelids. Her scream. His face.

“Reina? Are you watching, dear?”

My father’s voice echoed in my skull, cutting deeper than the explosion ever could.

“My greatest disappointment. 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?”

I clawed at the ground, dirt and glass biting into my palms, trying to chase the words from my mind. He was dead too.

“Reina!”

The sound of my name came from somewhere far away, muffled and warped like it was underwater. Someone grabbed my arm, yanking me to my feet. Hunter. I raised my chin, his face streaked with soot and blood. Tears brimmed in his eyes, sliding down his face and carving through the ash. His lips moved, frantic, but I couldn’t hear him.

Devastation blurred in the background. Soldiers darted in and out of the smoke, shadows against a backdrop of flame. People screamed. From fear. From pain. From rage. I felt it all. But none shattered me the way the loss of my sister did.

Amaia was gone. And it was his fault.

Ronan. My father.

The ground beneath me felt funny. Squishy. I glanced down.

Tomás lay sprawled out across the asphalt, his bionic leg shattered into debris. He wheezed in pain, mumbling something indecipherable. A hard shove came from behind, and I whirled around. Moe hovered over Tomás, trying to stanch the blood pooling beneath him. She whimpered, looking up at me with empty, sobbing eyes. “Help—help him.”

I stumbled back, bile rising in my throat. My vision swam. I turned, gagging, and bent over. My father. Everything always came back to him. His greed. His cruelty. His bigotry.

“Reina, focus!” Hunter’s voice broke through the haze, his grip tightening on my arm as he pulled me away. It was then that I realized Serenity was attached to the other side of him, her eyes locked onto mine, desperate. “We can’t stay here.”

“Hunter,” I choked out. “I?—”

“We can hate him later.” His voice cracked. “Right now, you have to get away from the area. You’re fueling him. Feeding his anger and rage. He’s a bomb waiting to explode with you here.”

Another scream shattered the air, raw and feral. Alexiares.

“I’m not … that’s not me. I?—”

It wasn’t me. I wasn’t angry anymore. Right now, I was numb.

“She’s not gone!” His words tore through the chaos, ragged and wild. “Let me go! Get off me or I swear to God I’ll fucking kill you too!”

Millie was there, her arms wrapped around him, trying to hold him back. “Alexi, stop! She’s?—”

“She’s not dead!” He broke, strength returning as he turned on her, a knife to her throat. Millie stood tall. Her body was beaten, battered, and bruised, hair tangled, lip busted—but she stood there, meeting his eye as he held her life in her hands, because she understood.

“My wife is not fucking dead,” he growled.

I couldn’t move. Alexiares’s pain crashed into me, a tidal wave of splintered emotion that left me drowning. “I can’t—” I whispered, my knees buckling.

“I know,” he said. “I know, Reina. But you have to keep going. We have to keep going.”

How? was what I wanted to ask him. Ronan had won. Amaia had secured our freedom, but my father had still won. Amaia was gone. There was no happy ending for her. The life she wanted, the dreams she had, none of it mattered.

“I wish he died a more painful death,” I said, the words tumbling out unbidden. They tasted tangier than blood. “I hope he and Seth burn in hell forever.”

Hunter’s grip tightened. “I do too.”