Novels by ANURIKA ANGELA

~ RHOSYN ~ "You won't scream," the voice said, almost gentle. "I already know that about you." My eyes snapped open to darkness, heart slamming hard against my ribs. I didn't know when I'd lost consciousness. One moment I'd been walking behind Gideon's group, matching pace best I could on legs that hadn't run in fifteen years. Then nothing. Now this — cold stone beneath me, wrists bound in front of me with something that didn't feel like rope at all. "Where am I," I said, forcing steadiness into words that wanted to shake. "Somewhere quieter than where you were," the voice answered. A woman's voice, calm, almost kind, which made it so much worse. "You'll forgive the theatrics. The note was necessary. Your Aelindra needed a reason to move fast and make mistakes." My stomach dropped. "You wanted her to come after me." "I wanted her to come after you recklessly," the voice corrected, warmth curling strange around the cruelty of it. "There's a difference. Recklessness creates open

~ LYRA ~ "We need to keep moving," Aelindra said, urgency biting through every word as she hauled Corin up by the arm. "He can't go faster," Darius snapped back, frustration and fear tangled together in his voice. "Look at him." Corin's legs had gone rubbery beneath him, each step landing wrong, like his body had used up whatever reserve of steadiness it had left back at the rock gap. I got under his other arm without being asked, felt his weight settle against my shoulder, thin and cold even through his sleeve. "How far to the lodge," I asked. "Twenty minutes if nothing else finds us," Aelindra said, scanning the tree line behind us with a wariness that hadn't eased since the creature dropped to one knee and let us go. "Fifteen if we're lucky." "We haven't been lucky all day." "No," she agreed, grim amusement flickering thin across her face. "We haven't." We pushed through the dark at the fastest pace Corin's legs allowed, which wasn't fast at all, every minute stretching lon

KAEL POV"He's stopped breathing right.""He's breathing fine," I snapped, fear sharpening the words harder than I meant them to."He's not," Elijah said, urgency cracking through his usual calm as he pressed both hands hard against Gideon's side. "Shallow. Too shallow. We need to move faster than this."Gideon's eyes had gone glassy somewhere in the last mile, fixed on the black canopy overhead like he was tracking something none of the rest of us could see. His lips had taken on a color I didn't like at all, pale at the edges in a way that made my chest go tight every time I glanced down at him."Lodge," I said. "How far.""Ten minutes if the terrain holds," Rafael said, breath coming ragged, his wrapped arm clutched tight against his ribs where he'd folded it since the fight in the basin."Then we make it hold."We pushed harder. I took Gideon's other side myself, felt his full weight settle heavier against me with every stride, and forced myself not to think too hard about what th

AELINDRA POV"Fire," Tate barked, terror sharpening his voice into something almost unrecognizable, and both Enforcers opened up before anyone gave the order, because there was no Kael here to give it and somebody had to decide.The rounds hit. Dust kicked off smooth dark skin exactly where they struck, small clean puffs against something that didn't so much as flinch.Nothing else happened.No stagger. No blood. Nothing that suggested pain lived anywhere inside whatever now stood between the two slabs of rock.Up close it had no face at all. Smooth dark where a face should have sat — no eyes, no mouth, nothing to read — and yet it turned toward the gap with the precision of something that already knew exactly where we stood without needing to look for us at all. Its legs bent wrong, backward in places a leg had no business bending, and it crossed the ground on them without a single stumble, without the slightest concession to a body that should have collapsed under its own constructi

~ LYRA ~"You should've gone with him.""So should you."Aelindra didn't answer that, just kept scanning the tree line where the fast group's shapes had already disappeared into the dark, Gideon's ragged breathing fading out of earshot faster than I wanted it to.Kael had looked back once before he went. I'd made myself not watch him go the rest of the way, because watching would have made the decision harder than it already was, and the decision was already the hardest thing I'd done since walking out of that cell."How many of us," I said."You, me, Darius, Corin. Two Enforcers." Aelindra crouched at the edge of the hollow, running her palm flat across a boulder the way she did with every surface that might tell her something. "Not enough to fight whatever's coming. Enough to slow it down, if we're smart about where we stand.""Slow it down how.""Terrain. Chokepoints. Anything that makes it come at us one direction instead of every direction at once." She straightened, looking arou

~ AELINDRA ~"What is that," Kael said."Give me a second.""We don't have a second.""Then give me half of one." I held up a hand, listening past the wind, past twenty people's breathing, for anything that would tell me the horn wasn't about to sound again.Nothing came. Not yet.Rhosyn had gone rigid beside me, one hand fisted in my sleeve hard enough to hurt."That's the sound," she said. "Aelindra, that's the sound from before. From when they took us.""I know.""You know what it is?" Kael's voice had dropped low, controlled, the same tone he probably used on Enforcers right before he needed them to move fast without panicking."I know what it did the last time I heard it," I said. "Which was the Hollowing."That landed the way I expected it to. Silence, sharp and complete, even Gideon's ragged breathing seeming to pause for a beat."Explain," Kael said. "Fast.""The old packs used it to coordinate. A signal built to carry across long distances, through terrain, in the dark. When