I’m not right.
Dragana is still standing there like she thinks she can talk me down. As if she’s not a breath away from being ash if I lose this battle, I’m barely fighting. She steps around the bar.
I take a half step back. “Don’t,” I whisper. My voice is frayed wire. “Stay there.” She freezes. Her eyes are still soft. Still human. Still hopeful.
I want to scream at her to stop looking at me like that. I’m not some girl who needs saving. I’m the reason the air is too thick. I’m the crack in the foundation. I’m what breaks the glass. And then I feel him before I see him.
Riven.
His presence cuts through the noise in my head like a serrated blade. Hot and clean and violent. My stomach clenches. My skin prickles. My mouth waters, and I hate it. Hate that I need him in this moment.
I turn my head. He’s seated in the back, half in shadow. One leg draped over his knee. Hands clasped. Completely still. Watching. Always watching.
His expression is unreadable, but his eyes are burning. Not with rage. Not with concern. With certainty. He knew this was coming. And he didn’t stop it.
My throat tightens as I take a step forward. And the floor under me cracks. It’s not dramatic. No explosion. Just a sharp pop and the sound of concrete cracking. A thin spiderweb fracture splits outward from my boot, delicate and terrifying. Like the earth itself is reacting to the thing inside me I can’t hold back.
Dragana inhales sharply. She sees it. Everyone does.
And then…chaos.
A man shouts. A woman screams. The last remaining patrons surge for the exit like rats from a sinking ship. The door slams open. Someone knocks over a table. The lights flash again, this time too bright. Bulbs burst in a cascade of popping glass and the whole room is bathed in that eerie, chemical glow of emergency lighting.
And I just stand there, breathing smoke.
My heart is pounding so hard it hurts. My hands are numb. My vision tunnels, edges black, center burning. Dragana moves toward me again. Slow. Careful. Like she’s approaching a bomb that hasn’t decided what kind of damage it wants to do yet. “Don’t come closer,” I hiss.
She stops. “Talk to me, Lux. Just tell me what’s happening…”
“I don’t fucking know,” I snap. It echoes. Louder than it should. My voice hits the walls, and the air shakes with it. A light fixture swings overhead like I triggered an aftershock. I blink hard. I don’t want to cry. But it’s close.
Riven stands unhurried, no trace of panic in the movement…and then he’s there. A wall of presence between meand Dragana, shutting out everything else until the rest of the room might as well not exist.
I don’t know if I move first or if he does, but suddenly we’re colliding. His hands close around my upper arms, firm but not cruel. I shove him. He doesn’t move. “I said…don’t touch me.”
“You don’t get to make demands when you’re seconds from ripping this building apart.” His voice is low. Controlled. Although I can feel it under the words, that edge. That worry.
“You think I want this?” I spit. “You think I planned this? I woke up shaking. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t stop it.”
“I know.”
“Then why didn’t you fucking stop me?”
“Because you need to break.”
That shuts me up. His grip tightens. Just enough to anchor. Not enough to bruise. “Let it happen,” he says, quieter now. “Stop trying to hold it in. That’s what’s killing you.”
I shake my head, wild, feral. “If I let go, I won’t come back.”
“I’ll pull you out.”
“You can’t. You won’t. You’ll watch me burn.”
“I’ll burn with you.”
And that’s the last thing I hear before it all goes white.
The moment the whiteout hits, I’m weightless. If feels as if I’ve been ripped out of my body and left dangling in the smoke between seconds. There’s no sound. No heat. Just brightness and airlessness. My lungs don’t move. My fingers don’t feel. And somewhere under it all, there’s a noise, my noise, a low, broken sob clawing its way up from a place I’ve buried too deep to name.
