Chapter 23
“What did that Magister say to you?” Nikos demanded the moment they were clear of the market.
The cold snout of his gun dug into Audrey’s back as they made their way through the village alleys. Smoke stuck to the high walls. Every doorway looked like a threat.
Audrey’s breathing sped up. She didn’t answer right away. She didn’t want to admit how deeply that old woman had seen her. The words still reverberated in her head.
Golden aura. Rare even among triads.
She’d thought about running into the market—God, she’d ached for it—but too many observers and too many hands keen to drag her back. If she ran here, the Separatists would catch her, or others would turn her in. A mistake she couldn’t afford.
No, she’d wait. The right moment always came eventually. There was always a crack somewhere if you stayed alive long enough to see it.
“I…” She faltered. “What’s a Magister?”
“A shaman. A speaker with spirits. Someone who reads auras and emotions, deals with pnévmas, confirms bondings, oversees tests.” His eyes pinched to slits. “You’re born a Magister, not made.”
Pnévma. The word glimmered in her mind.
“She mentioned my pnévma,” Audrey murmured. “What is that?”
Nikos stopped dead. Everyone froze with him.
“Your pnévma?” He glared at her. “Exactly what did she say?”
The cuffs still bit into Audrey’s wrists, vibrating lightly. They had muted her mind to a blur for days now—but not perfectly. And since the Magister touched her, the power under her skin had stopped feeling buried. It felt cornered.
“Why are you angry? You could’ve stopped me from talking to her,” Audrey shot back.
“I let her speak because I wanted to know what she saw. I couldn’t risk getting too close in case it scared her away.” He raised the gun. “Now. Tell me.”
“She said I had a powerful pnévma,” Audrey said, the words small in her mouth.
“Shit.” The word left him like steam seeping through a crack in stone.
Audrey’s teeth ground. “Tell me what it is.”
Nikos rubbed his bare scalp, as if he might smooth away his irritation. “Your mother really told you nothing,” he muttered. “A pnévma is the spirit inside every Voírían. It takes an animal shape when we’re not on Nepra. Gives us our abilities. Sometimes overrides us if we lose control.”
Audrey’s breath stuttered.
Her monster.
She had always sensed something prowling inside her.
Was that what it was? It wasn’t a fantasy or a metaphor for something else. This was a literal beast that sometimes took over her body.
“What else did she say?” Nikos shoved her, gun ready, though his power alone was a threat.
“She said…this is the year.” Audrey winced, immediately regretting the truth.
The reaction was instant.
Nassar grasped her shoulder. “What? Did she mean the Conscription? Did she—”
Audrey ripped her arm free, baring her teeth. “Don’t touch me.”
“Enough!” Nikos thundered. “People say that every year. Conscription just passed. She knows nothing.”
“What’s Conscription?” Audrey asked. The word brought an old memory of her mother saying it like a curse to the surface.
She refused to talk further about it, but later Audrey looked it up in a dictionary.
It was defined as compulsory service or forced enlistment, yet the fear in her mother’s voice had implied something worse.
Audrey couldn’t shake the impression that Conscription wasn’t just about losing freedom—she got the distinct feeling it shaped Voíríans into weapons.
Her fists shook at the thought.
“Another time,” Nikos said flatly.
That meant the word mattered. Which meant her mother had feared something worse than prison.
“Christ, fine.” She rolled her eyes. “Just stop grabbing me.”
“Shut up, Audrey,” he snarled. “You’ve said enough.”
For once, she agreed.
The questions stopped as they climbed the hill out of town. Audrey welcomed the peace, needing the space to think. Everything from the past week tumbled around in her head.
Conscription. Tests. Pnévmas.
She ran her fingers through her tangled curls. The closer they got to Home Field, the more she wanted to attack, to move, to do something. She needed one of them alone. Basir first, if she got lucky. Then Taryn. Then a Silo. Then Emerson, if he was still alive and still following.
It was a bad plan. Full of holes. But it was a plan.
Five seconds.
That was all she ever needed.
They stayed at another ramshackle house that night. The Separatists had safe houses scattered across the moon, which made them seem far more organized than Audrey wanted to admit.
Basir shook her awake. He shouldn’t have.
Audrey struck on instinct, snapping upright with a snarl. She attacked because the constant danger made every touch a possible threat. The sharpened toothbrush jabbed into Basir’s neck; the broken comb spike buried into his side. Her boot cracked against his shin.
Basir roared—a sound raw enough to choke the air, and the room shattered into chaos. Nikos and Nassar burst inside, weapons ready. Taryn screamed and threw up her hands. Audrey braced herself for bullets or flames or both.
But then Nikos exhaled a cloud of black smoke, swallowing the room in shadow. When Audrey glanced at her through the smoke, Taryn looked terrified. Of all of it. Of what the room had become. Of what they were all turning into.
Audrey threw out her arm on instinct, trying to stop him. Something responded, hot and ravenous, inside her. The cuffs should have stopped it. Instead, they only seemed to choke the power, turning it into a violent, erratic force underneath her skin.
Audrey paused.
The room seemed to halt with her.
The sensation growing inside her was no longer a feeling.
It was power.
And it was hers.
A knife sliced past her cheek—she caught it midair with nothing but will, ripped it out of the smoke, and drove it straight into Nassar’s heart.
He gasped once and folded.
Audrey was already turning toward Basir, who was on his knees, holding his bleeding throat, horror collapsing his features.
Nikos’s power gathered in the room. Blue fire dripped from his fingers, searing the air. “Audrey!” he called. “Stop or I burn this whole fucking place down!”
She dropped the makeshift toothbrush weapon—she didn’t need it anymore. The cold switchblade shook in her hand. “Good,” she said in a soft voice. “Then we all get what we deserve.”
Basir lunged. Audrey grabbed him by the throat, and they struggled for several seconds. He stabbed her thigh. She barely felt it at first. Her whole body was already burning.
She burned him as gold fire climbed her arm, wild and greedy.
The Magister had awakened something in her—a wild urge.
It burst to life, making it increasingly impossible to ignore.
Craving it unsettled her. Would this power control her as her mother thought?
Would it make her cruel, dangerous to Taryn or anyone else?
Before the Magister, the cuffs quieted everything. Now, they scarcely contained her.
Whatever had woken inside her was done pretending to be small.
Basir’s screams scraped the ceiling as he held his inflamed throat.
She dropped him only when he turned quiet.
Blood dripped down her leg. She seared the wound closed with her own heat, biting back a scream.
It was still hard to control and difficult to summon, but she managed. Red clouded her vision.
Basir crawled away, pathetically, leaving streaks of blood.
Audrey seized him by the collar and dragged him back. “What was it you said to me?” she asked, power imbuing her words.
He couldn’t answer. His mouth spilled blood.
“Look at me,” she growled. “Look at me when I kill you.”
He trembled—eyes moving toward Nikos.
Audrey smashed his head into the floor a few times, marking each hit with her words.
“LOOK.
AT.
ME.”
She sounded as insane as she felt. “It will be my face you see,” she whispered, “when the last spark leaves your eyes.”
She drew back her arm—
—but Nikos’s fist crashed across her temple. Light burst behind her eyes. Audrey dropped hard, one hand skidding across the floor, the room pitching sideways around her.
She didn’t black out. She almost wished she had.
Through the drumming inside her head, she heard Basir choking, Taryn sobbing, Nikos swearing in Voírían. Someone kicked the knife away. Someone else called her a curse.
By the time she forced her eyes open, they had her pinned.
Hours later, Audrey lay in the back of the truck again, the world reduced to the sound of rattling metal.
Her thigh throbbed hot and swollen. Someone had wrapped a bandage around her half-melted cauterization job, but it did nothing for the pain. Her lip was split, puffed to twice its size, and her shirt had dried stiff with blood.
It was worth it.
Pain meant she’d drawn blood first. She’d left marks.
Grinning through the metallic taste in her mouth, she licked her fingers, smearing dried blood.
“Hope that bastard Basir’s hurting worse than me,” she said hoarsely to no one, imagining him writhing and blistered.
Or dead—preferably dead—like Nassar.
She’d already earned her place on the wall they talked about. May as well drag more of these Separatists with her.
She’d always been good at ruining things.
And she had fire now. Audrey felt it coiled somewhere deep inside her, restless and waiting. The heat triggered something in her memory—smoke, shouting, the smell of something burning that wasn’t wood. Audrey shoved the thought away before it could form.
Then the truth settled in, though, refusing to be ignored.
The fire inside her didn’t feel new—it felt remembered.
What the hell have I become?
Across from her, Taryn’s wide eyes followed the burn along Audrey’s thigh and the bruising on her face. Audrey gave her a crooked, bloody smile.
“It’s fine. Totally fine,” she said, which made no sense even to her.
Taryn crawled carefully over the metal floor and gently used her shirt to wipe the blood off Audrey’s mouth.