Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
EMMA
We spilled into a dense stretch of forest where the air was thicker, damper, and colder than the open field we’d abandoned. The canopy arched high overhead, branches tangled so tightly they strangled the moonlight into fractured shards that broke across the snow.
The silence here was suffocating, broken only by the groan of frost-laden trees and the ragged edge of his breathing as I slammed him against the rough bark of a pine.
The scents were different too, wet earth hidden beneath the snow, sap bleeding sharp and resinous from split branches, smoke trailing faintly on the wind from the battle we’d left behind. It felt as if the forest itself had gone still, every shadow leaning closer, waiting for the first scream.
My Skindo hovered just above his chest, its blades thrumming with menace. “You’re going to show me that warrant,” I said, voice low enough to chill the air between us. “Or you’re going to bleed out here, and no one will ever find your body.”
He only shrugged, though I caught the flicker in his expression, and the faint tremor betraying how much the magic had shaken him. “Pretty sure that’s in my future either way.”
I straightened, spine iron. “Fine. If that’s how you want to spend your last hour, so be it. But make no mistake, you will show me that piece of paper.”
With meticulous precision, I sheathed my Skindo back into its tattoo, the blades dissolving into ink against my skin. Then I let the scarlet energy spill free, a living current that coiled up and around his throat like a noose, tightening enough to make him choke.
He clawed at the invisible bind, eyes bulging, spit flecking at the corners of his mouth as he fought for air. I tilted my head, watching the panic bloom across his face, the way his boots scraped furrows into the snow as if he could somehow push himself free.
“Pain is a symphony,” I murmured as his strangled gasps grew louder. “Keep resisting, and you’ll be nothing but fucking music before the night’s over.”
The scarlet haze pulsed at my command, tightening, loosening, tightening again in methodical rhythm, enough to make him believe every next breath might be his last. His face purpled, veins standing out against his skin as he wheezed.
“Where is the warrant?” I asked, quiet but deadly, my focus locked on him. “Show it to me, or I’ll peel the truth out of you piece by piece until you’re begging me to end your life.”
I barely registered the portal flaring open behind me.
“Emma.”
The sound of my name was a blade, slicing through the red fog clouding my thoughts.
My body went rigid. Slowly—reluctantly—I turned, as if moving underwater.
James and Caden stood in the shadows of the trees.
James’s face was carved from stone, tension pulling every line taut, fury and fear warring beneath the surface. His fists were balled so tight I could see the tendons straining white beneath his skin.
Caden, in contrast, looked maddeningly bored, like this was the least impressive situation he’d seen all week.
His gaze drifted lazily to the soldier thrashing under my haze, before his voice came out smooth, completely unbothered by the sight of it. “He’s going to need to breathe if you want him to answer you.”
I refocused on the soldier and eased the haze just a fraction. He doubled over, hacking and wheezing like he’d been cast as man dying loudly in the background.
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, cut the crap, you big drama king. I didn’t even crush your windpipe. If I had, you wouldn’t be whining, at least not this loud.”
“Emma,” James hissed. “Cease this. Whatever you think you need, this isn’t the way to handle it.”
My teeth ground together. “He has a copy of the warrant, the one written in my name. The one that led to my parents’ death. He refuses to share it with the subject of his actions. He’d rather invade an entire country than let the so-called criminal read the actual bullshit charge they made up!”
The haze cinched tighter, the soldier’s face purpling again as he clawed uselessly at his throat.
“Colt!” James sounded nearer to desperate now. “Tell her to stand down.”
Behind me, there was the faint scrape of movement, but no order came. When I finally glanced over my shoulder, I caught Caden leaning casually against a low branch, translating a cigarette out of thin air.
For a moment, the sight of him stole my focus: raven hair stark against the snow, his body all lean muscle and infuriating calm, cigarette glowing between his fingers as if he had all the time in the world.
And of course, he noticed me staring for a beat too long.
The bastard’s mouth curved into a slow, knowing smirk before he tipped me a wink that sent heat rushing through me and set my blood boiling for all the wrong reasons.
“Fucking player,” I muttered under my breath, forcing my attention back to the soldier choking at my feet.
“Will you stop that, Emma? And what the hell, Colt?” James’s voice cracked with disbelief. “Don’t you care about her at all?”
I didn’t even have to look to feel Caden’s exasperation. His reply came out flat, edged with boredom. “She’s just strangling him a bit, James. You’re acting like she’s peeling his skin off in strips.”
I cocked my head at the soldier, letting the haze pulse tighter around his throat. “Could I do that?”
“Enough!” James’s roar shattered the air. His Skindo snapped out in a burst of steel as he lunged forward, hand shooting toward me like he meant to drag me back by force. “I won’t watch you become this!”
Before he could reach me, Caden was there, stepping into his path so fast it was almost a blur. His hand clamped around James’s arm, iron-tight, holding him in place.
“Back off,” Caden said, voice low, calm in the way that was somehow more dangerous than shouting. “She needs to work through this.”
James’s chest heaved, his green eyes blazing. “Work through it? She’s torturing a man—”
“Which is exactly what Offensives—not unlike you—do,” Caden cut him off, his grip tightening, “If you can’t deal with that, you get the fuck out of here.”
For a second I thought James might swing at him, but then he yanked his arm free, fury radiating off him in waves. Without another word, he ripped open a portal and jumped through. He was gone before the green shimmer faded.
The silence left behind was deafening, broken only by the soldier’s ragged gasps and the steady hum of my haze.
Caden turned to face me. “Did you bother to talk to Walker after the Chiefs’ visit?”
A growl rose in my throat as I struggled to keep the asshole down. “Little busy at the moment here, Colt.”
“So that’s a no,” Caden said flatly, his tone dry. “Do us all a favor will you? Grow some balls and deal with him already. The way he’s circling you is pathetic, and frankly, I’m getting sick of watching it.”
I rolled my eyes. “I might have mentioned this once or twice before, but you have no sense of timing.”
Caden moved then, stepping deliberately into my line of sight, but not between me and the soldier.
No, he positioned himself right behind the man, lowering into a crouch. The soldier flinched, his body trying to recoil even as my haze kept him shackled against the bark.
My vision narrowed, suspicion spiking. “What?”
Caden’s gaze flicked to mine, steady, unreadable, smoke still curling from the cigarette between his fingers. “There’s an easier way to get what you want.” His voice was quiet, but it carried enough weight to slice right through the haze buzzing in my ears.
My fingers twitched against the tether of my haze. “Which is?”
He exhaled once, the smoke ghosting past his cheek. “Depends on what it is you really want, Nightcrawler. Do you want the warrant…” His head tilted slightly, his attention cutting to the soldier’s purpled face. “…or do you just want to hurt him?”
I froze for a heartbeat, the soldier’s strangled gasps filling the silence.
Revenge or truth. What was I after?
It only took me an extra beat before I finally loosened my haze. “I want the warrant.”
Caden gave a single curt nod, flicked his cigarette into the snow, and straightened. His expression shuttered, pure business now. “Then let’s get it. Do you remember when we first visited Slava, how I pulled the memories out of that Radical?”
I nodded once, pulse still hammering.
“Good.” His tone dropped into command. “Restrain him. Chain him to the ground if you must. I’m going to teach you how to interrogate like an Offensive.”
No hesitation this time. My haze lashed out, searing into the stone at our backs, and thick scarlet chains welled into existence, bolting the soldier hard against the rock. He strained uselessly against them, metal rattling in the frozen silence, but there was no escape.
“I won’t tell you anything,” the soldier hissed, a useless defiance against what was coming.
I didn’t even look at him. My gaze remained fixed on Caden. “Now what?”
He leaned in slightly, his tone low, and precise. “Focus your energy on his mind, not his body. Think of it like digging, pulling the memories up one by one, sifting through them like pictures in a book. Don’t linger. Don’t hesitate. Flip until you find what you want.”
My fingers flexed, scarlet haze pulsing. “And what I want is the warrant.”
“Exactly,” he said with a sharp nod. “Every thought he’s had about it, who showed it to him, where he saw it, what it said. Drag it out. Tear it free with force if you have to.”
I frowned, then redirected my focus onto the man chained in front of me. Crimson energy licked across his skin, searching, probing.
“Grab his head with both hands if that feels more comfortable,” Caden suggested.
I did, my palms pressing hard against his temples. The moment I closed the circuit, the magic surged, violent, and immediate. It was like shoving my hands into a furnace and finding not fire but thought, raw and jagged, spilling against me in a torrent.
Memories flickered, faces, voices, pages of a document I couldn’t quite read.
But in the blur, I knew I’d found the thread I was looking for.
“I have something,” I mumbled, mostly to myself, barely audible over the hum of my haze. The man beneath my hands jerked against the chains, but I hardly registered the movement.
“Good,” Caden said evenly, now standing at my shoulder. “Imagine pulling it to you, as if reaching for a book in a library. Choose it. Claim it.”
The memory glowed in the tangle of his mind, a single filament of clarity in the chaos. My fingers dug harder into his skull, and for a heartbeat I swore I could feel the paper under my hands.
And then, there it was. Words. A signature. The presidential seal burned across the page…
My eyes snapped shut as I ripped free of the man’s mind, his soundless scream still echoing in my skull. And that’s when I heard it.
“Shit,” Caden muttered under his breath.
The portal cracked open behind us, light tearing across the clearing as Rachel stormed through, and shouted, “What the fuck are you doing?”