LOGINOdessa's POV
We walked back together, close and quiet, neither of us saying much on the way, though something had settled between us that hadn't been there when I first slipped out the door hours earlier. I still felt the guilt sitting heavy in my chest, but it no longer had a border and a note attached to it, driving me toward a decision made alone in the dark.Garrick met us in the front hallway, and one look at both our faces told him more than he probably needed asking qOdessa's POVThe cracks didn't stop at the edges of the symbol.They kept spreading, faster now, branching out across the stone floor in jagged lines that reminded me of frost creeping over glass, except each fracture glowed faintly gold at its edges, the same color as the light still pulsing beneath my palms. I felt something building behind my ribs that had nothing to do with pain anymore."Stop this," Corvin said again, his voice had lost the smooth, unhurried quality it always carried. "You're going to hurt yourself. You have no idea how to control something this size.""Maybe I don't need to control it," I said, my own voice sounding strange to my ears, steadier than it had any right to be given everything happening in my chest. "Maybe I just need to stop letting you control it instead."The floor beneath me shuddered.I felt the pressure that had been crushing my lungs for what felt like hours finally give way completely, not draining out of me the way Corvin had intended, but r
Odessa's POVRonan didn't get the chance to move.The gold light beneath Corvin's feet pulsed once, and the hand he lifted toward Ronan barely looked like a threat at all, more like a man swatting at something irritating rather than a man wielding actual power. But the moment his fingers curled, Ronan's whole body locked mid-stride, one foot still raised off the ground, his arms frozen at his sides like something invisible had reached into him and stilled every muscle at once."What did you do to him?" I said, my voice cracking, the words came out sharper than the pain in my chest should have allowed."A simple restraint," Corvin said, unbothered, watching Ronan's frozen struggle with the same clinical interest he'd shown Julian's body minutes earlier. "He'll feel nothing beyond the indignity of it, provided he stops fighting."Ronan's eyes strained toward me, furious, helpless, his jaw the only part of him still capable of movement, working hard against whatever held the rest of him
Odessa's POVCorvin knelt again, his palm returning to the carved symbol beneath his feet like he simply paused a task rather than watched a man die inches away from him."Ronan," I gasped, some instinct warning me a half second before the pressure in my chest doubled. "Don't let him…"The words cut off in a scream.It hit without warning, sharper than anything before it, like every nerve in my body had been set alight at once. My back arched off the stone floor, my hands clawing uselessly against nothing, and the sound that tore out of me didn't feel like it belonged to a person anymore."Stop it!" Ronan roared, and something in the room actually seemed to bend under the force of his voice."I'm simply finishing what I started," Corvin said, calm even now, even with me screaming on the floor a few feet from him. "You interrupted a delicate process, Mr. Kade. Delicate processes rarely appreciate interruption.""I said stop!"Ronan didn't shift. I don't think he even considered it. He
Odessa's POVIt didn't look like the fights I already watched Ronan win. Those had rhythm to them, exchanges, moments where either side might have turned the tide with the right instinct at the right second. This wasn't that.Julian never had a chance to let go.Ronan's claws caught him across the throat before Julian's mind fully processed what was closing in on him, his eyes still wide with that same desperate, cracked hope, his fingers still locked tight around my wrist even as his own blood began spilling dark and fast down the front of his ruined jacket."No," I heard myself say, the word came out too late, too weak, swallowed by the crushing pressure still pinning me to the stone floor.Julian's grip on my wrist finally loosened, not from any decision, just his body giving out all at once, his legs folding beneath him as he collapsed sideways, away from me, his hand finally slipping free.He hit the ground hard.Nobody
Odessa's POVCorvin opened his mouth, already shaping the cold, final repetition he intended to offer Ronan, some renewed confession delivered with that same maddening calm he carried through every other conversation we ever had.The doorway exploded a second time before he got the chance.Julian staggered through the wreckage of the first broken door, stumbling over a chunk of splintered frame, his jacket torn at the shoulder, his hair a mess, his eyes wild in a way I never once seen from him. Behind him, I caught a glimpse of Briar shouting something at Micah, both of them still braced against the flood of enforcers pushing hard from the corridor,but neither had managed to stop Julian from slipping past them entirely."Julian," Corvin said, and something sharp finally cut through his composure. "This is hardly the moment.""I read it," Julian said, his voice cracking, breathless, like he'd run the entire distance without stopp
Odessa's POV"Contained," Ronan repeated, his voice dangerously flat. "That's your word for whatever you're doing to her right now?""It's the accurate word," Corvin said, unbothered, straightening his sleeves like a man finishing a minor errand rather than standing over a girl crumpled on the floor. "Though I understand it may not carry the same weight to you as it does to me.""Ronan," I managed, forcing the word out through gritted teeth, the pressure in my chest still crushing, still pulling something vital further out of reach with every passing second. "Don't listen to him. Just get me out.""I intend to," Ronan said, though he hadn't moved, his eyes locked on Corvin like he was measuring the exact distance he needed to close before the man could react."You should know something first," Corvin said, and something in his tone shifted, almost conversational, like he had all the time in the world despite the chaos still audible just beyond that shattered doorway."I don't care wha







