Chapter 23 Bree
Bree
Where are they?
The thought circles through my mind like a mantra as Phil’s laughter echoes off the sanctuary walls. Gray, Rhett, Jace, Wes, Theo—I can’t see any of them in the crowd. Can’t feel their presence the way I usually do, that warm anchor that tells me I’m not alone. And Thane, Stellan—where are they?
What if Phil hurt them? What if they’re lying somewhere bleeding while I’m trapped here, helpless? The possibility makes my chest seize with panic that has nothing to do with my own safety and everything to do with theirs.
I need them. I need to know they’re okay, need to see their faces, need—
Seth’s hands on my arms feel like shackles.
Phil’s laughter echoes off the sanctuary walls, bouncing back at us from every direction until it fills the air like smoke. The crowd presses against the buildings, a sea of faces watching our destruction unfold.
I can’t breathe past the panic clawing up my throat. Can’t think beyond the way Seth’s fingers dig into my skin—not cruel, but firm. Certain. Like he has every right to hold me here while Phil circles us like a predator.
“Let go of me,” I whisper.
Seth’s grip tightens. Not painful, but deliberate. His hands are warm and steady, the same hands that helped families at the border. The same hands that gestured gently as we walked through the garden, making me feel like I had a friend who understood.
The same hands that are now keeping me trapped.
“Let go of me.” Louder this time.
Phil’s smile widens. “Oh, I don’t think he will, Bree. You see, he’s been very patient. Very loyal.” His eyes flick to Seth with something like approval. “Haven’t you, Seth?”
Patient. Loyal.
The words crawl into my skin and stay there. How long has Seth been patient? How long has he been loyal—to Phil, not to me?
Every quiet conversation we’ve had over the past weeks flashes through my mind. Every time he asked how I was doing, every gentle question about my day, every moment I thought someone actually cared about me without wanting something in return.
Was any of it real?
“How long?” The question tears out of my throat before I can stop it. “How long have you been lying to me?”
Seth doesn’t answer. His face remains calm, gentle even. But there’s something different in his eyes now. Something that was always there, maybe, but I was too grateful for kindness to notice.
Distance. Calculation. The look of someone playing a role.
“Such a dramatic little thing,” Phil says, and his voice carries that same reasonable tone he used to use when he’d corner me in my apartment hallway. When he’d explain why the rent was late and what I could do to make up for it. “Always making everything so much harder than it needs to be.”
The Ether stirs around my feet, responding to the fear and rage building in my chest. Silver light flickers, shot through with black threads that pulse with power.
“You have no idea what you are, do you?” Phil continues, stepping closer. “What you could become with the right guidance. Daddy’s been so looking forward to meeting you properly.”
Daddy. The word sends ice through my veins. Not Phil, then. Someone else. Someone worse.
The ground beneath us trembles.
“All those times you helped around the sanctuary,” I say to Seth, my voice cracking. “All those conversations in the garden, all those times I showed you around because I thought you cared. Was it all just… surveillance?”
Something flickers across Seth’s face. Not guilt, exactly. Maybe regret. But not the kind that comes from hurting someone you care about. The kind that comes from a job becoming more complicated than expected.
“Did you report everything?” I press, desperation bleeding into my voice. “Every conversation, every moment I trusted you, every time I let my guard down? Did you tell Phil about all of it?”
The silence stretches between us, heavy and damning. Seth’s grip on my arms shifts slightly, and I catch the smallest curve of his lips. Not cruel, but satisfied. Like he’s exactly where he wants to be.
Like this moment—my terror, my betrayal, my complete helplessness—is what he’s been working toward all along.
The realization breaks something inside me.
Not the gentle kind of breaking that heals clean. The violent kind that leaves jagged edges and makes you dangerous.
“You were supposed to be safe,” I whisper.
The Ether responds to my words, silver light climbing higher around us. But the black threads are spreading through it like poison, and the air begins to taste of metal and lightning.
“You were supposed to be different.”
The crowd shifts restlessly. People step back, sensing something building. Even Phil’s confident expression flickers as the temperature around us drops.
“You were supposed to be mine.”
The last word comes out raw, desperate. Because that’s what hurts the most—not that Seth was working for Phil, but that I thought I finally had someone who was just mine. Someone who chose me without wanting to use me or break me or reshape me into something else.
Someone who saw me as worth protecting instead of worth hunting.
But there is no one like that. There never was.
My eyes find them in the crowd—Gray’s face twisted with something that might be fear, Rhett’s hands clenched uselessly at his sides, Jace looking younger and more lost than I’ve ever seen him.
Wes pale and shaking. Theo’s usual calm shattered.
Even Thane and Stellan, hanging back with expressions I can’t read.
Even them.
The realization fractures whatever I had left.
The ground splits beneath my feet, hairline cracks spreading outward like a spider web. The ancient stones in the sanctuary walls begin to hum, power flowing through them like they’re remembering something they’d forgotten.
“Let go of me,” I say one more time.
Seth’s hands tighten. “I can’t do that, Bree.”
His voice is gentle. Apologetic, even. But his grip doesn’t loosen.
And that’s when I understand that he’s not going to let me go. That Phil isn’t going to stop. That no one is coming to save me because the person I thought might try is the one holding me prisoner.
I scream.
The Ether explodes outward like a star going nova.
Silver and black light erupts in every direction, tearing through the air with a sound like the world splitting open. The sanctuary responds instantly—stones crack in the walls with reports like gunshots, ancient timber groans and splinters, the very foundations of the building shudder.
The power doesn’t just destroy. It transforms.
Where the silver light touches, impossible flowers bloom from cracked stone. Where the black threads reach, the ground turns to obsidian glass that reflects nothing. The two forces war with each other, creation and destruction locked in perfect, terrible balance.
The earth bucks beneath us like a living thing. Cracks spread outward from where I fall to my knees, radiating through the courtyard in a pattern that looks almost like wings. The air itself burns, crackling with energy that makes every nerve in my body sing.
Glass shatters in every window of the sanctuary. The crowd cries out, hands pressed to their ears as the sound of raw magic tears through the space like breaking metal. Some collapse to their knees. Others run.
And through it all, the sanctuary’s ancient power awakens.
The building doesn’t just respond to my Ether—it amplifies it. Stone that has stood for centuries suddenly remembers what it was built to do. To protect. To serve. To answer the call of Scarborne blood.
The walls pulse with silver light. The roof tiles rearrange themselves, forming patterns that hurt to look at directly. Even the trees in the garden lean inward, their branches reaching toward me like they’re trying to shelter me from what’s coming.
Seth screams.
Just once, sharp and sudden. Then there’s nothing.
The weight on my arms vanishes. A sound like thunder echoes from where he was standing, but when I look, there’s only empty space and a scorch mark burned into the stone.
I don’t understand. Can’t process what just happened through the chaos of power still tearing through me.
All I know is that suddenly I’m alone.
Phil throws up a shield, green light crackling around him as my power slams into it. But he’s not fast enough, not strong enough. The Ether burns through his defenses like they’re made of paper, sending him staggering backward with blood streaming from his nose.
“Impossible,” he gasps, one hand pressed to his chest where the power scorched through. “You’re untrained. You don’t have the control for this kind of—”
The force builds again, tearing through what’s left of his shield. The barrier buckles under the assault, cracks spreading across its surface like breaking ice. With a sound like thunder, it shatters completely.
The blast sends Phil flying. He hits the ground hard enough to crater the stone beneath him, his perfect suit reduced to smoking tatters. When he finally stops rolling, he’s coughing up blood that steams where it touches the superheated ground.
For the first time since he arrived, Phil looks genuinely afraid.
But even wounded, even bleeding, his eyes still glitter with something like hunger. Like anticipation.
“Magnificent,” he breathes, pushing himself up on his elbows. Blood runs from the corner of his mouth, but he’s smiling. “All that fury, and not a drop of control. Do you see what you are now, Bree?”
He spits blood onto the cracked stone, his predatory grin widening despite the pain.
“You’re not their queen. You’re their executioner.”
No.
I try to stand, to deny them, but my legs won’t hold me. Everything hurts—my head, my chest, my hands. The taste of copper fills my mouth, and I can’t tell if it’s from the magic or from biting my tongue.
Around us, the destruction spreads. Cracks web through the courtyard. Windows lie in glittering fragments. The air still hums with residual power, making my skin crawl and my hair stand on end.
And in the center of it all, I kneel alone.
“You don’t even know what you’ve done, do you?” Phil asks, and there’s something almost gentle in his voice. Almost pitying. “Poor little Bree. So much power, so little understanding.”
He gets to his feet with visible effort, straightening his ruined jacket like he’s at a dinner party instead of the center of a magical catastrophe.
“But don’t worry. Daddy will teach you. He’s very good at teaching control.”
Then he’s gone, vanishing into shadow like he was never there at all.
The silence that follows feels like death.
I kneel in the center of destruction, surrounded by cracked stone and twisted metal and the charred remains of what used to be beautiful sanctuary grounds. The air tastes of ozone and burned magic, sharp and acrid in my throat.
The crowd is pressed against the far walls now, as distant from me as they can manage while still being in the same space. They’re staring at me with expressions I’ve never seen before—not just fear, but revulsion. Horror. Like I’m something unnatural that’s crawled up from the depths of hell.
And maybe I am.
Footsteps approach, but they’re careful. Hesitant. Like the people making them aren’t sure they want to get any closer.
The guys emerge from the crowd slowly, and I can see the exact moment they take in the full scope of what I’ve done.
Gray’s clothes are torn from his earlier transformation, dried blood still streaking his skin where the shift had torn through.
His eyes are wild when they meet mine, but there’s something else there too. Something that might be fear.
Of me.
Rhett smells of smoke and ash, heat still radiating from his skin in visible waves. His hands shake as he stares at the destruction, and I realize some of it came from him. His power, reacting to mine, adding to the chaos.
Wes looks like he might collapse. His face is pale, drained, and he won’t meet my eyes. Can’t meet my eyes, because he felt it all—my rage, my betrayal, my complete loss of control. The empathy that usually draws him to me must have been unbearable when I was like this.
Jace’s knives are scattered across the ground, forgotten. He’s staring at the place where Seth was standing, his usual cocky grin nowhere to be found. His face has gone gray, like he’s seen something that will haunt him forever.
Theo approaches first, but even he stops several feet away. Like I’m something dangerous. Something that might explode again if he gets too close.
And maybe I will.
“Bree?” His voice sounds far away, careful and controlled in a way that makes my chest ache.
I look up at them through the haze of exhaustion and pain. Their faces are different somehow. Changed. There’s something in their eyes that wasn’t there before—not just concern or worry, but wariness. The kind of wariness you reserve for wild animals or unstable explosives.
They’re afraid of me.
Really, truly afraid.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, my voice barely audible over the ringing in my ears. “I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t.” Gray’s voice cuts through the air, rough with something I can’t identify. “Don’t apologize.”
But they’re not coming closer. Even Wes, who usually can’t help but reach for me when I’m hurting, stays frozen where he is. Like there’s an invisible barrier between us now, built from fear and betrayal and the memory of what I’m capable of.
Nobody moves to help me up. Nobody offers comfort or reassurance or any of the gentle touches I’ve come to depend on.
They just stand there, staring at me like they’ve never seen me before.
Like they’re not sure they want to.
Behind them, I catch sight of other faces in the crowd. Zira, her usual confidence replaced by something that looks like shock. Mairen, clutching her husband’s arm with white knuckles. Even Stellan and Thane hang back, and these are men who’ve seen centuries of violence and power.
But they’ve never seen anything like this.
Never seen someone lose control so completely that they destroy everything around them without even meaning to.
I close my eyes and try to stop shaking, but the tremors won’t fade. Neither will the taste of metal in my mouth, or the way the ground still hums with residual power beneath my knees, or the terrible certainty that I’ve crossed a line I can never uncross.
The Ether curls around my feet, subdued now but still threaded with those black veins. Still wrong. Still dangerous.
Still mine.
When I open my eyes again, the guys are still there. Still watching. Still afraid.
And somewhere in their faces, in the careful distance they’re maintaining, I see the truth that Phil wanted me to understand.
I am exactly what he said I am.
Their executioner.
The only question now is whether they’ll run before I hurt them too.