Together, they turned toward the cells, the weight of seven lives pressing hard against the narrow window of escape. But they only made it three steps. A sound rang out from the end of the gallery—scree—the cruel drag of metal against stone.
JingYi’s blood ran cold.
Tedric stood at the end of the walkway, rapier trailing in one hand, its tip streaking blood across the floor.Haorán’s blood?Tedric’s coat hung open, dark with sweat and blood spatter, and his smile—crooked and cold—didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Well,” he drawled, voice low and ragged, “aren’t we industrious.”
He stalked forward. JingYi didn’t miss the sheen of sweat on his upper lip, the tremor in his sword hand he was trying to mask. The fungushadworked. He just hadn’t swallowed enough. He’d played possum, waiting to see who would show themselves.
And Haorán had paid the price.
JingYi clutched Adelise’s hand, but Tedric was already on them. His hand closed around her neck. She choked. The keys clattered from her grasp as he yanked her back. Her limp threw her off-balance. He shoved her toward the railing, blade pressed across her belly.
JingYi’s spine arched over the iron edge until only his grip kept her from the pit below. Her fingers found his sleeve and held. Her vision tilted. Below—nothing but stone and the promise of a crash-landing waiting for her.
“You want to save them?” Tedric snarled in her ear, breath hot and ragged. “You brought the boy? Who is he?”
Her throat convulsed. The edge of the rapier dug into her ribs.
“You’re not a killer,” he whispered, “butIam. And you’ve made me very tiredof waiting for you to come to your senses.”
From the corner of her eye, JingYi saw Adelise grab a rusted torch bracket from the wall. With a sound between fury and fear, she struck hard across Tedric’s shoulder. Then again, and again.
He cursed, staggered, but didn’t let go.
Instead, he turned and drove a kick into Adelise’s stomach. She hit the wall headfirst and crumpled.
“No,” JingYi rasped, but the word barely made it past her constricted throat. Her eyes darted to where Adelise lay motionless. A silent scream built in her chest.Not her. Please, not her, too.
Tedric twisted her around and forced her onto her knees, facing the gallery railing. She struggled, hands holding onto the jagged edge of a stone post. He released her only to grab the roots of her hair and pull.
“You had your chance to save everyone,” he said gently. “And you failed.”
He slammed her head into the post. The world exploded in white. Ears rang. Pain fractured across her skull in shards. Her body buckled, knees skidding on the floor. The blood in her mouth tasted warm and coppery.
The cell doors rattled. The Omegas behind bars yelling—at Tedric, at her, in multiple languages.
And she . . .laughed.
A broken, guttural sound—half-wheezing, half-hysteria—spilled from her bloodied mouth. She cackled until her ribs ached, until her wounded skull pulsed, until the tip of Tedric’s blade jabbed her side in warning.
Above her, he froze. For the first time, he looked unsure of her. She looked up at him from below, blood on her lips, defiance in her eyes.
“You think this will break me?” she said, ignoring the way blood dripped from nose to chin, from her temple down her cheek. “You have no idea what I’ve endured.”
Her body trembled, but her voice only sharpened. “I’ve been slapped, starved, whipped, branded. I’ve had my worth measured by what I couldn’t give, what I couldn’t be.”
Her lungs burned, and still, she smiled. Teeth bared. “There’s nothing you can do to me that hasn’t already been done before.You are notspecial.You’re just the latest in a long line of men who thought they could beat me into submission.”
Tedric’s face twisted with something ugly. Revulsion. Contempt. A predator robbed of his prize. His blade clattered to the floor. Both hands grabbed her throat. JingYi’s breath vanished in an instant. This was no longer a strategy. It was rage—cold, unhinged, personal. She saw it in his eyes: she’d humiliated him. Refused him. Defied him when she should’ve cowered and obeyed.
And now, he’d make her pay the only way a man like him knew how.
Her fingers clawed at his wrists, nails tearing at skin. Pressure swelled behind her eyes, her face burning as blood had nowhere to go. She reached up, raking at his jaw, his ear. Her lungs screamed. The world hazed, his face above her blurring as her vision tunneled. Sounds thinned—the rattle of metal, the cries of the Omegas growing distant, heard through water.
Her hands weakened. Each grab more useless than the last. Her head felt swollen, light and heavy at once.
A roar. Somewhere distant—or close—she couldn’t tell. The stone shook. Tedric’s hands faltered.