Page 144 of Ruthless Knot

But I've never seen them executed like this.

She turns and turns and turns, each rotation faster than the last, her body a blur of light and motion and desperate, devastating beauty. The counting is visible in her movements—four beats, always four, even numbers that keep the chaos contained while she channels everything she is into the dance.

Then she stops.

Dead center stage.

Perfectly still.

The music fades to something softer, and in the silence that follows, I finally notice what's behind her.

Cages.

A dozen of them, at least, arranged in a semicircle at the back of the stage like some kind of macabre backdrop. And inside them?—

Bodies.

Men.

Some of them clearly dead—heads lolling, limbs at wrong angles, blood pooling beneath the bars. Others are still breathing, but barely—groaning, twitching, clinging to consciousness with the desperation of people who know death is coming and can't escape it.

The arsonists. The ones who set fire to her home while she was away, who tried to take the last safe space she had in this nightmare.

She found them.

Cagedthem.

And now she's dancing in front of their ruined bodies like they're nothing more than scenery.

Jesus Christ.

The sadistic beauty of it steals the breath from my lungs.

She doesn't look at us immediately.

Just stands there in the spotlight, chest heaving from exertion, sweat glistening on her skin, that wild pink hair fallingaround her face in damp tangles. The costume she's wearing—now that I can see it properly—is stained with blood. Not hers, I don't think. Someone else's.

The men in the cages.

The ones who thought they could take from her without consequence.

Slowly, deliberately, she raises her arms and executes a perfect bow.

Then she lifts her head.

And her eyes—those devastating mismatched eyes, blue and green and burning with something that might be madness or might be victory—lock onto us.

Onto Kai.

"So tell me, my ruthless enemy," she purrs, and her voice drops into something soft and deadly, something that promises sweet violence and sweeter revenge. "What alliance is worthy enough for me to dare dance with the devils of Hard Knot Academy?"

The words hang in the air.

A challenge.

A taunt.

An offer dressed up as a threat.