Chapter 30
Two weeks after Ryker carved his mark into her skin, Audrey was still failing, and every day she failed, her sister’s life became more endangered.
If Audrey didn’t master her power soon, she’d never escape to live with her sister again. The rare triad ability Ryker wanted made her distinct. It was the only reason he hadn’t disposed of her yet. As long as Audrey showed potential, Cary stayed alive as insurance. Fail, and they’d both be lost.
The morning after her encounter with Ryker, Kat dragged Audrey to the training ground. Dozens of women waited. They radiated strength and ignored her rank as a Simas or gold triad. Before Audrey regained her bearings, half tried to incinerate her.
“This is bullshit,” Audrey had uttered between dodges of cobalt flame. “Where do the mind readers train?”
“Nowhere,” Kat had answered. “And you need to keep that shit to your fucking self.”
Today, five unlit torches stood around them. Wind whipped across the field until Audrey ached for any heat to steady her trembling body. Nepra seemed like a void, as if training took place in the bones of something old and dead.
Audrey tried to remember why she was here.
To protect Cary. To survive long enough to learn how. Her sister was the only family she’d left—the one person who saw her, accepted every broken piece, and gave her a reason to endure. The idea of losing her twin moored her will.
The training grounds spread along the edge of Home Field in cornered-out sections. First came the fotiá yard—Voírían for fire—and then the kínisi yard—Voírían for movement. Kat was right that no one trained with telepathy—or nous. It had taken Audrey a long time to learn the Voírían word for mind.
Whistles and bells moved everyone from one station to the next with strict precision. Some days, she wondered if she had died in the night and woken in one of hell’s colder rings.
Every day was the same. In the mornings, Kat led fire pit drills among torches, braziers, and blackened stones.
Then, Maren commanded the kínisi yard—its hardened earth scattered with metal scraps.
Afterward, there were more drills with guards or older women who corrected with their fists.
Evenings ended in silence as Audrey’s exhausted body was dragged inside and locked in a room.
The routine stayed relentless by design. Nepra women who served the Separatists were meant to become weapons over the course of their training.
But for Audrey, failure had a timetable.
She drank a cup of that bitter broth every day.
Pushing her hair from her face, she drew a shaking breath.
Kat’s authority was perseverance. She taught as someone who’d long stopped expecting softness to work. Burn. Fail. Correct. Burn again. On Audrey’s first day, Kat shoved her into the dirt. She’d failed to ignite a pile of sticks.
Maren’s role was distinct: quieter, more technical. She trained women who’d displayed kinetics—manipulating objects, shaping pressure, controlling fields. The day before, Maren punched Audrey in the mouth for pressing too hard.
Where Kat wanted instinct, Maren insisted on exactness.
But they both believed that power without control was worthless here.
So, she tried again.
Nothing.
Again.
Nothing.
Sweat stung her eyes. Her breath rattled. Nausea crept under her ribs.
“Two weeks,” Kat said. “And you’re still this terrible.”
Audrey ground her teeth so hard she thought she might crack a tooth. She wanted to burn Kat to ash. Unfortunately, that was the one thing she couldn’t seem to do.
Fire was supposed to be easy. Even Voírían children could conjure it. Yet Audrey still couldn’t produce so much as a spark. Instead, Kat had her doing humiliating little tasks: light this cigarette, heat that oven, ignite these lamps.
“I’m not like you,” Audrey muttered. “Whatever you’re trying to make me do—it’s not working.”
“No one gives a fuck what you think. Thinking is your problem.”
Thinking was the only thing that had kept Audrey alive for ten years.
Kat jabbed a finger at Audrey’s sternum. “A Voírían acts from here. Feel, don’t think.”
Audrey almost laughed. She’d spent a decade wanting nothing more than for the thoughts in her head to shut the hell up.
They worked in brittle silence. Beneath Kat’s sharp edges, Audrey sometimes felt a glimmer of something like reluctant mentorship. Maybe even kinship.
“Again,” Kat snapped, gesturing to the torches. “The fire is here. It’s everywhere. Command it.”
Audrey sighed.
At first, she’d carried herself like a Simas. Her mother’s name. Gold triad potential. Something rare and powerful. But weeks of failure had carved that pride down to bone.
The whispers in her head grew louder.
You killed your parents. You deserve this.
Self-contempt churned through her, but she needed to stay alive—for Cary. For the promise Ryker had dangled before her: power. Freedom.
Captivity was wearing her thin, though. The constant brush of other people’s thoughts clawed at her nerves.
Every day felt like walking barefoot across glass.
Her temper frayed. Her walls cracked. A guard had shoved her yesterday.
She’d bared her teeth and growled with that low vibrating trill deep in her chest. He’d gone pale and let her pass.
And today, a crack split clean down her patience. “Fuck you. Fuck this place.” Audrey surged to her feet, anger blazing hot enough to almost be flame. “I might look like you, but I am not the same. I don’t belong here.”
She lunged, forgetting she was a prisoner and that she could read intent. In fact, she forgot everything but the need to hit something.
Kat’s fist met her cheek before Audrey even registered the movement. “Stupid, stubborn female,” Kat snarled. “You’re as Voírían as they come.”
Audrey spat blood into the frozen dirt. “Some fucking teacher you are.”
Kat moved with inhuman speed, hauling Audrey upright by the neck. A low growl poured from her throat. “I am sick of your bullshit, korítsi mikró.”
“What does that even mean?”
Kat’s smile was sharp as flint. “Little girl. But you can take it as ‘little bitch.’” A chill knifed through Audrey. She’d been lying to herself. Kinship? Belonging? This woman could and would kill her if she failed.
“Mihail and I stuck our necks out for you. Don’t make us regret it.”
Audrey struggled against the chokehold.
Kat leaned closer. “Hating yourself isn’t strength. Hating everyone else isn’t a strength.” She paused. “The only creature standing in your way is you.”
Then she released Audrey, letting her drop into the dust.
“Now do something that resembles success—and do it soon.”
Fear flickered under Kat’s disdain—the first honest emotion Audrey had caught from her. She was afraid for Audrey if she kept failing.
“Your chances with me are running out,” Kat said, stepping back. “And you will not like what comes after.”
Audrey lay in the dirt, humiliation burning hotter than any Voírían flame. If she couldn’t master her abilities, Ryker would kill her. Then he’d go after Cary.
She had days—maybe a week.
Audrey forced herself to her feet, every muscle trembling with exhaustion and buried rage.
Kat turned to leave. Then paused. “Next time,” she said without looking back, “try controlling it instead of fighting it.”
Audrey followed, steeling herself for whatever fresh hell Maren had planned next.
Maren hadn’t liked her from the moment their eyes met.
Her hostility had been instinctive, immediate, as though something in Audrey’s blood triggered an old predator’s response. Audrey had hoped time might soften it.
Instead, the loathing only sharpened.
Audrey had learned enough in scraps to know Maren was not just another bitter woman with a grudge.
She had survived Conscription before she was twenty, survived a Field transfer after that, and come out with enough control to be trusted around unstable recruits without losing her nerve.
Other women stepped aside when Maren crossed the yard.
Guards listened when she spoke. Even Kat didn’t waste words challenging her.
Once, Audrey had seen a younger trainee lose control of a floating blade.
Before anyone else moved, Maren had snapped her hand sideways and sent the weapon spinning harmlessly into the dirt without even looking up from the cigarette she was rolling.
No panic. No flourish. Just reflex born from repetition.
That was what made her hatred harder to dismiss. She was cruel because she had survived this place so completely that part of her had fused with it.
Part of her hate, Audrey suspected, was resemblance.
Maren looked disturbingly like her, with the same dark curls, almond-shaped black eyes, and olive skin, lit cold under Nepra’s sky.
Smaller, narrower, but edged like a blade.
Audrey’s curves felt like liabilities in a culture of carved stone bodies, and her gold-ringed eyes marked her as something else.
Something more dangerous.
Maren lacked that—but not power.
Audrey obeyed Ryker’s rule. Mostly. She stopped reading minds. Stopped slipping through thoughts like fingers through silk. But emotional bleed? That she couldn’t stop.
By then, two weeks of training had taught her something ugly: Home Field didn’t care whether she learned.
It cared whether she could be pushed into usefulness before something in her broke the wrong way.
Every correction came with a clock behind it.
Every failure tightened the atmosphere around her.
No one had said it out loud, but Audrey could feel it stalking her in the spaces between orders.
That was why Maren’s strictness mattered. Why Kat’s impatience mattered. Why every guard’s glance felt heavier than it had the week before. She was running out of time to become whatever Ryker needed—or to escape before they decided she wasn’t worth the trouble.
Maren’s emotions battered her constantly—distrust, frustration, and something else.
Jealousy.