Chapter 17
Arough jolt dragged her from unconsciousness. The smell of rotting food and sour booze hit her nose. Someone breathed near her ear. Traffic blared beyond the darkness—honking, tires hissing on damp asphalt.
Audrey tried to scream, but her throat worked soundlessly.
Memories of her killing her mother crashed down on top of her.
Her eyes flew open. When her sight cleared, she took in the surroundings: behind another building, near the dumpsters. They were still somewhere in the warehouse district.
Mihail grasped her by the shoulders, hauling her upright and then pressing her back against the brick wall. He pressed his hand over her mouth to keep her silent.
It didn’t matter. She’d known freedom, and what he wanted promised only another cage.
So, she fought despite being completely overpowered.
As Mihail’s hold tightened, Audrey sensed his intentions on instinct.
His endgame was bigger than revenge or cruelty—he wanted her to power some larger plan, and whatever he intended would demand everything she was.
His other hand swept over her in a rough, cursory search. He didn’t linger, only checked for injuries, cataloging the damage. His energy was frantic, his aura crackling against hers.
Blinking hard, she focused past his shoulder. They were wedged in a recessed doorway halfway down a narrow alley, brick coated with grime. Neon from the street painted everything pallid green and pink. The city roared—sirens far off, a bottle breaking, a laugh too loud—but no one looked down here.
“Let go of me,” she rasped.
“Not a chance,” Mihail shot back, his tone flat.
“What’s wrong? Scared of me?” Her lips turned into a sneer.
“Should I be?” His brow narrowed a notch. The grip on her throat loosened. He dragged one finger across her clavicle, stopping at the cut her mother had given her, then smudged the blood, eyes going cold.
“I want nothing to do with you,” Audrey spat. “Sophia had that right.”
“So gracious,” he murmured. “I just saved the most valuable thing on this planet. The fire I started might’ve tipped off law enforcement. Impulsive—even for me.”
“I didn’t need your help.”
“Sophia nearly put that blade straight through you.” He tapped the blood, casual, like pointing out a stain.
“Didn’t ask you to stop her.” Audrey fixed him with a glare.
“Normal people never ask first,” he said with a grin.
“What would you know about normal people?”
He didn’t bother to reply. The answer was obvious—this man was nowhere near normal.
Fuck this.
Audrey braced her hands against the uneven brick behind her, inhaled deeply despite the discomfort in her ribcage, and focused hard, surging telepathically into Mihail’s mind.
The world blew apart.
Violence crashed through her mind—cities aflame and a man crowned in obsidian watching it all in an arena. His face and those eyes were forever burned into her retinas.
Ryker.
Another lurch, and she was inside a hall carved from black stone.
Mihail knelt before Ryker, who sat on a gleaming black throne.
He didn’t move. He didn’t have to. The same crown made of obsidian hooked around his temples like claws.
Audrey felt the emotion before she understood its cause—fear.
Not the kind men felt for monsters, but the kind soldiers felt for a commander who could order them to die and be obeyed.
The memory shifted.
A girl walked toward the crowned man with a smirk, one hand on her hip. She was alive and whole, but Audrey’s mind rejected the image instantly—Cary was supposed to be dead.
Then the girl turned her head, and the scar across her throat gleamed in the light.
It was her.
Pain burst in Audrey’s skull, yanking her out of the vision. She staggered backward, holding her head as the reality of the alley fell back into place around her.
Mihail pressed his knuckles against his brow, then glared down at her. “Find anything interesting?” he asked.
She swallowed, her throat sore. “How do you know my sister?”
“You’re not the only telepath we’re tracking,” he replied, amusement curling back through his voice. “You look just like her, you know.”
“We’re twins, you stupid fuck,” she ground out. “Of course, we look identical.”
“Yes,” he agreed mildly. “But she has a rather distinctive mark across her throat from having it slit. Hard to miss.”
Audrey’s breath faltered. The idea of her sister alive, walking around some alien megacity while Audrey rotted on Earth, made her dizzy. She was still in shock. “How do you know her?” Audrey demanded, shoving him.
He rocked back a fraction and laughed. “Your mother brought her to Nepra ten years ago—we Voíríans have been stuck there for a millennium, so it's obvious when someone new shows up.”
Footfalls splashed in the poodles of rain, and Emerson appeared out of the shadows. He shoved Mihail onto the pavement.
The fight lasted mere seconds.
Emerson hit him twice before the alley exploded into blue fire.
“You think this is going to work out for you?” Mihail shouted at Emerson, tipping his head toward Audrey. “You won’t be able to handle her. And when Ryker finds out what she really is?” His smile grew wider. “All you’ll do is piss him off.”
Audrey’s patience snapped. She struck her fist into Mihail’s nose.
His head jolted back, blood spraying the gravel. “Still think you’ll walk away from this?”
Audrey watched, breathing hard.
“Of course,” Mihail said, smirking. Blood painted his teeth. “It’s all perspective.”
“You’re insane,” Audrey said. “What the fuck does that even mean?”
“Exactly what I said.” He closed his eyes and drew in a long breath.
Then he moved.
Flames licked up his fingers, lighting the alley in haunting blue. They roared into a perfect circle, sealing them in. Audrey scanned for an escape, but flames hemmed them in, heat punching the air from her lungs.
Emerson glared, shooting bullets blindly toward the outline of Mihail’s shape, but the shots disappeared into the blaze.
A shadow slipped at the edge of the fire. Mihail lifted his hand, and the ring collapsed with a hiss, sucking back into nothing. Nikos appeared behind them like he’d been made from the dark itself, big hands clamping down on Mihail’s shoulders.
They moved faster than thought.
Audrey hit the pavement hard. Her wrists were bound before she could move. The bands around them buzzed. She flexed on instinct, receiving a sharper sting—an electric warning humming throughout her bones. Something about the bracelets muted her abilities.
Indeed, the restraints weren’t just simply metal like handcuffs.
They were thin bands that sat flush against her wrists, humming at a frequency that she felt in her teeth.
Every time she reached outward with her mind, the stinging vibrations pushed back—blunting the edge of her thoughts, smothering any flare of her power.
Whoever made them built them for people like her.
Who had designed such technology? It was miles beyond anything human authorities could imagine. As the bands pulsed, Audrey guessed they weren’t made on Earth. Only those who’d battled telepaths for years—and only off-worlders—would know how to silence her powers or have access to such materials.
Next to her, Emerson grunted, muscles tensing, but whatever held him was just as strong. She could hear him still fighting the cuffs, his breath harsh and furious through his teeth.
Nikos planted a boot between Emerson’s shoulder blades and leaned his weight into it until Emerson’s muttering turned ragged.
Audrey twisted enough to see the hierarchy more clearly. Nikos was the muscle, the weight holding them down. Mihail was the one giving orders. Jaxon was gone entirely. Emerson, pinned and bleeding, had lost whatever claim he thought he had over the situation.
That left Mihail.
Not just physically, but operationally, she was his now—his failure if this went wrong, his explanation when they got wherever home was. The realization landed cold and immediate. There would be no courtroom, no police, and no appeal. Just a transfer of ownership from one man to another.
Audrey tested the bands again, thinking about how the gun had responded to her earlier. She tamped down the impulse as the buzzing increased in response.
Nikos muttered something harsh in a language Audrey didn’t understand. Mihail replied in English, then nudged Audrey with the side of his boot. Emerson, straining against his own cuffs, cursed at them in what she assumed was Ezebethian.
“We should’ve kept Sophia alive,” Nikos said under his breath, his tall form looming over her.
“Sophia knew what Audrey was,” Mihail muttered. “A gold triad.”
Nikos swore under his breath. “Ryker will want to see her for himself then.”
Audrey froze against the vibrating restraints.
Gold triad.
The term kept circling her like a vulture and still meant nothing.
The words felt less like a description and more like a sentence.
Her mother had tried to kill her because of them.
Mihail wanted to own her because of them.
And now there was this other thing—fraying—which sounded like some slow collapse waiting for people who couldn’t control what they were.
A fresh tide of anxiety threatened to choke her.
What if Sophia hadn’t been cruel at all? What if she’d been terrified of what Audrey would become?
She pushed her face harder into the filthy concrete and fought for air. For the first time since the fire came out of her hands, she felt the full pressure of it: she might not survive herself.
Emerson made one last violent attempt to rise. Nikos drove him back down so hard that Audrey heard the breath leave him.
Her eyes closed at the sound. Whatever strange alliance had existed between them was ending here, on concrete and broken glass.
Whatever happened next, Mihail’s people would decide the path, the destination, and the terms. Emerson was no longer the one moving her through the story.
He was just another figure being left behind.
Nikos made a harsh noise, half-curse, half-growl. “He’s still going to kill you when he finds out she’s dead.”
“I didn’t kill Sophia,” Mihail said. “Audrey did. And we would’ve had to put her down eventually. She was fraying. Audrey just saved us some trouble.”
“You'd better hope you can convince him this one is worth it,” Nikos insisted. “Cary’s a ghost, and we need a Simas for what Ryker’s planning—specifically, a gold triad, telepathic and more. And I need my sister back. How are you even sure she is a gold triad?”
Mihail wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Ryker’s been testing what survives pressure for years, looking for Voíríans strong enough to hold all three abilities without fraying.
The fire and telekinetic abilities have been easy to find, but telepathy is so rare among our people that it’s practically impossible,” he said.
His eyes fell to Audrey, precise and chilling.
“That’s why Sophia attempted to bury you on Earth.
You weren’t hidden from us because you were weak.
You were hidden because, if Ryker sees what’s in you, he’ll claim it. ”
Audrey fought against the shackles, her voice ragged. “What exactly do you want with me?”
Neither Mihail nor Nikos bothered to answer her; they didn’t even glance her way. Instead, the two men continued their conversation as if she were a malfunctioning piece of equipment discarded in the gutter.
“Ryker was overseeing the Conscription trials, so he tasked me with handling this personally. He still doesn’t trust me after last year.”
Conscription. Trials. Ryker was in charge of both. Audrey filed it away. If Ryker wanted Sophia and Cary—and now her—then whatever a gold triad was, it mattered. Her sister was in danger. And Audrey would sacrifice herself gladly to keep her out of this nightmare.
“It was the right call,” Nikos said.
“I know,” Mihail replied with steady confidence. “But Ryker will want to see Audrey for himself. And when he does, this will make sense.”
Even Mihail sounded careful when he said that name. She sensed both men’s eyes falling on her.
Mihail continued. “So, time to go home. Let’s get them drugged. Prep the Si-IDs. We’re moving them through the route.”
Home.
The word meant nothing anymore.
Audrey’s stomach knotted at the reference to Silo IDs. She’d surmised what they were based on what Emerson had told her and the trap they’d originally set for her mother.
Transit clearance for off-world movement.
“Wait,” Audrey stammered, trying to squirm away from their shadows. “Wait, wait, where are you taking us?”
Nikos gave her a slow, wicked grin. He dug into his coat and pulled out two prepped syringes, liquid shining in the alley’s weak light.
Maybe it was a sedative, or something worse. She prayed it would wipe all of this out, scour it clean. Blankness sounded easier than waking up wherever they were taking her.
“See you on the other side,” Nikos drawled, catching her chin and turning her face away, exposing her neck.
Her body tensed—and still, some deep, broken part of her leaned toward the needle. Hungry, always hungry for the quiet it promised.
The needle bit into her neck.
The alley dissolved around her.
Earth disappeared with it.
Then the world went dark again.