Silence.

  It struck harder than any scream. Heavy. Viscous. Dead.

  Consciousness returned in a single violent lurch, ripped from oblivion by a thunderous crash. Heavy, methodical blows against the main doors.

  I drew a ragged breath, feeling my lungs tear with the effort. The cold frost on my cheek burned my skin. I had no memory of sliding to the floor against the column. My last recollection was the flash of annihilation and Adrian's face... and then—darkness. Brief as a blink, yet deep as death.

  The crash came again. The protective perimeter crackled, shedding sparks. It was that sound that dragged me back.

  The hollow emptiness of the Obsidian Palace—a place that had seemed an impregnable fortress only the day before—now felt like a crypt. The walls, soaked in generations of the Chernov family's magic, no longer whispered. They screamed.

  A thin, unbearable ringing pulsed in my ears—the aftermath of a shockwave from a shattered shield. The floorboards beneath me swayed like the deck of a sinking ship. My bones ached, and hot, salty blood trickled from my nose.

  I stopped above a patch of absolute blackness ground into the stone floor. The marble was simply gone. Scooped out like a spoonful of soft butter. A perfect circle of void, two meters in diameter. The edges of the cut smoldered with cold, pale vapor, rising from the stone—freezing instantly and settling as frost against my bare feet.

  The mark of pure entropy. Annihilation.

  The matter hadn't burned. It hadn't turned to ash. It had been *erased* from the blueprint of reality. And with it vanished the one who, a moment ago, had raised a dagger against me.

  My legs trembled. A fine, treacherous shaking worked through my knees and radiated into my lower back with a deep, pulling ache.

  *The child.*

  The thought surfaced from somewhere deep within me like a shard of ice. Months had passed since that day at the Shadow Market, when Eliza Ogneva had struck. And I still felt that phantom weight. A burned-out hollow where life should have been kindled. Today, that hollow had finally found its voice. It had spoken in the language of destruction.

  I remembered the warm pulse I had felt that evening when Adrian had first laid his hand against my stomach. We could have... No. That "could have" no longer existed. Eliza had incinerated it, Demyan had betrayed it, and I... I had just buried what remained of my humanity alongside an assassin in that void.

  A hot trickle ran from my nose. I tasted it. Salt. Bitterness. Blood. Thick and dark, almost black, dripping onto the white marble and leaving heavy blots that seemed to scorch the stone.

  The world blurred. The edges of objects doubled, tripled, dissolved into cold blue sparks. My left eye saw nothing—only a grey, clinging veil. Something warm and sticky trickled from my ear, too. Had my eardrums ruptured? Or had the blood vessels in my brain simply given out under the pressure of the power I'd forced through myself?

  I tried to take a step and slid down the wall. My bones felt like brittle glass, ready to splinter at the slightest careless movement. A cold—deep, sepulchral, born in the very heart of the Void—flowed through my veins in place of blood. It turned the marrow to icy splinters, forcing my muscles to contract in sharp, painful spasms.

  Adrian was nearby.

  I saw him through the fog. He wasn't moving. He looked like a statue carved from obsidian. But I could feel his pain. It resonated with mine, vibrating on the same frequency. Using Entropy, even when *I* released it, burned through his shields and his flesh. Shadow magic was kindred to this force, but it was only a pale echo of true Chaos.

  Adrian was crouched beside Marta's body.

  Her eyes were open. Glassy. Empty. Surprise had frozen in them. Her throat had been cut with one precise, deep stroke. The throwing knife the assassin had used lay a few steps from the body—Adrian had already marked it with a magical tracer.

  Adrian was checking her pulse. Mechanically. Pointlessly. There was no pulse. There couldn't be.

  His face had gone ashen. The shadows beneath his eyes were black hollows. His lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line. The Shadow—usually obedient and solid—now whipped around him in ragged, half-transparent shreds. He was exhausted. The shields had drained him dry.

  "The protocol's been breached."

  His voice was a raw scrape. Each word tore at his throat. He raised his eyes to mine. Red. Inflamed. Burst capillaries had flooded the whites with blood.

  There was no fear in them. Only devastation.

  "Are you... are you all right?"

  "I don't know." My lips barely moved. My voice fractured into a whisper. "My legs feel like cotton. Like they don't belong to me. I can barely feel them."

  A void was expanding inside me. A vast, black vortex. It rotated, sucking in what remained of warmth, emotion, thought. Life drained into it like water down a drain.

  A crash.

  At the far end of the hall, near the towering main doors, the protective dome flared a sickly, alarming red. The network of force fields crackled, raining sparks. Someone was hammering against it from outside. Methodically. Brutally. The blows of their breaching tools rattled the very fabric of space.

  "They've come."

  I slid down the wall. My legs gave out. The energy I had released was now draining me in return. The vacuum demanded to be filled.

  "Adrian... it hurts."

  "Hold on!"

  He reached me in an instant. Pure reflex. He caught me before my head could strike the floor, his arms shaking but his grip iron.

  "Don't you dare black out! Do you hear me? Look at me! It's recoil. Just magical recoil."

  "The patrol..." I struggled to focus on the door. It was bowing outward. Metal groaned. "A Council response team. They detected the surge."

  Adrian swept the hall with the wild, cornered gaze of a hunted wolf.

  Chaos. Overturned furniture. Frost on the walls. The body of the woman who had raised him. A blank space where an elite assassin had stood a minute ago. And me—a living epicenter of catastrophe, radiating Void strongly enough to draw blood from a normal person's ears.

  "Damn."

  He swore softly. With the weight of helpless fury.

  "Damn, damn, damn. This wasn't in the plan. We're not ready. The scenario's gone to hell."

  "Marta..."

  "Marta's *gone*!" The shout tore out of him, and he crushed it immediately. "The assassin was too fast. I... I didn't seal off the kitchen perimeter in time. I failed, Anya. This is on me."

  That admission hit harder than any magic. Adrian Chernov. The Ice Prince. The Strategist. Confessing to a mistake. Not in control of the situation. We were sinking.

  "Get up." He grabbed my shoulders and shook me. Hard. Ruthlessly. "Anya! Listen! You're in shock. You're a witness. You did nothing. You panicked and hid. Do you understand?"

  "I'm starving."

  A cramp seized my stomach with such force that I nearly doubled over, a moan escaping my lips. The pain was physical. Sharp. A blade in my gut.

  "Adrian, I'm *dying* of hunger..."

  "Not now! Endure it! Shut that hunger down! Close yourself off! You're a mirror. Smooth, cold glass. You're not radiating anything. You're not feeling anything."

  *CRASH.*

  The Palace doors were ripped from their hinges. The magnetic locks gave with a shriek of torn metal. The heavy panels, clad in mithril, crashed inward, billowing a cloud of dust.

  People flooded into the hall.

  Ten fighters. Heavy assault armor, Aegis class. Black, matte, light-absorbing. Helmets with tactical visors. On their shoulders: the emblem of a silver wing against a storm. The Wind Hawks. Elite special forces of the Voronov Clan. Demyan's personal guard.

  Demyan Voronov strode at the head of the unit.

  No jacket. Shirt unbuttoned. In his hand: the family sword, blazing with the blue flame of wind magic.

  But he was afraid.

  His face was white. His eyes darted. The sword in his hand trembled faintly.

  "Everyone down!" he shouted, his voice cracking. "By order of the Council! Special forces are in operation! Weapons on the floor!"

  The fighters fanned out, bracketing us in a half-ring. Their paralyzers hummed as they charged. But I could see it—the indicators on their visors were blinking red. Their electronics were failing. My "background noise"—residual entropy—was burning out their sensors.

  I pressed myself to the floor, trying to make myself invisible. I was not the "Queen." I was a terrified girl who was about to collapse from exhaustion.

  "Count Voronov."

  Adrian rose slowly. He swayed, but held his spine straight. He put himself between me and the door.

  "You're breaking into private property without a warrant?"

  "Shut up!" Demyan jabbed his sword in Adrian's direction. The blade danced. The blue flame of the ancient Voronov heirloom blazed brilliantly, resisting the entropic decay that had already begun to liquefy the ordinary steel of his mercenaries' rifles. "The sensors registered a Class A rupture! This place was radiating like a reactor! What have you done here?!"

  His gaze fell on Marta's body. He stopped for a moment, his eyes widening—he recognized her, the old housekeeper who had always received the Obsidian Palace's guests with flawless grace. For an instant, something almost human flickered in his expression, but he seized control of himself immediately. With a look of thinly veiled distaste, Demyan stepped over the corpse, careful not to scuff his polished boots.

  "A servant's body in the center of the hall?" He nodded toward Marta with cool contempt. "Collateral damage, Adrian. Your failure to ensure the safety of your staff. Your negligence."

  "We were attacked," Adrian said, his voice a rough scrape. "An assassin."

  "What the hell kind of assassin?! The energy level in here is high enough to level a city block! Where's the artifact? What did you detonate? A bomb? A ritual?"

  Demyan didn't believe it. He was looking for signs of a terrorist strike.

  He raised his hand and pointed deliberately at the scored circle in the floor. At the void.

  "There's your assassin."

  Adrian gave a nod toward the cut.

  "An assassin. He slipped through the perimeter undetected."

  "And where is he?" Demyan moved closer. He peered into the hole. He recoiled from the cold. "Evaporated?"

  "Annihilated."

  Demyan shifted his gaze. Slightly to the left.

  The dagger.

  The only thing that remained of the killer. The weapon had slipped from his hand, thrown wide by the shield's recoil, rolling clear in the fraction of a second before the assassin's body dissolved into atoms. The dagger had landed beyond the edge of the perfect circle of Darkness, and only for that reason had it survived. Had it been even an inch closer, no forging technique in the world could have spared it from dissolution.

  "What is that?"

  Demyan's face drained of what little color remained. His pupils dilated.

  "Do you recognize it?" Adrian asked softly. "Come closer, Count."

  Demyan stepped forward. He bent down.

  "That's... the *Phoenix Sting*."

  "Bingo."

  Adrian smiled. It was a terrible smile. A skull's grin.

  "The standard covert weapon of Fire Clan special units. Eliza's guard. Seventh squad. He walked through the estate's external shields like they were smoke. This 'Sting' was designed to crack any perimeter."

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  Silence. Heavy. Viscous.

  The Wind Hawks exchanged glances. A Fire Clan dagger at a crime scene in the Wind sector. That could mean one of two things: either Demyan had let the assassin through, or he was complicit.

  Demyan reached for the dagger. Slowly. Very slowly.

  His *hand*. Not his magic. Not telekinesis—a basic skill for any Air mage of his level.

  The entropy field in the hall was so dense it crushed every other form of magic like a slab of concrete. Demyan was "empty." An ordinary man in a wrinkled, open-collared shirt.

  I watched his fingers shake. Sweat traced a line down his temple.

  Where was the icy mask now? Where was that arrogant prince who had looked at me in the Opera House like something scraped off his boot?

  Before me stood a frightened boy who had just understood that his fiancée had set him up. She had sent a killer into his sector without warning. And now *he*, Demyan, looked like an accomplice.

  "I... I need to secure the evidence." His voice trembled. "Protocol..."

  Adrian put his boot on Demyan's hand.

  *Crunch.*

  Demyan cried out and snatched his hand away.

  "The dagger stays here," Adrian said quietly. "For the record. For the Tribunal. So everyone can see how Eliza Ogneva conducts business in your sector, Voronov."

  "You still want to call this a 'random break-in'?" Adrian pressed. "He passed through Class IV shields. He had the access codes. Current codes. They rotate every twenty-four hours. Only Clan Heads have them. Eliza. Morozov. And the commanders of the duty patrols. You, Demyan."

  "That's... that's impossible." Sweat broke out on Demyan's brow in large beads. "I didn't give her the codes! I swear it! She... she couldn't have..."

  "She could," Adrian cut him off. "And she did. She used you, Demyan. Like a blind screen."

  "You arrived too fast."

  Adrian drove each word home like a nail.

  "Three minutes from the moment of rupture." He underscored every syllable. "You were waiting for the signal. You knew she was going to strike."

  "I... I was on patrol!" Demyan shouted. "We were on a sweep two blocks from here, blocking the perimeter because of 'anomalous magical activity'! When the breach report came in, I... I was the closest! She set me up! She used my codes! I came running thinking it was a terror strike! And she... she dragged me into this filth! This is a violation of the Pact!"

  "Lies or incompetence," Adrian said, with a shrug. "You can choose at the tribunal."

  Adrian jerked his chin toward Marta's body.

  "You killed my housekeeper, Voronov. But I'm still breathing."

  Demyan looked around, cornered. His own fighters were watching him with suspicion.

  "I'm taking Anya." He spit the words out—a lifeline, a way to redirect attention. "She's the primary witness. The inquisitors at the Citadel will question her. We'll ensure her protection."

  "Protection?" Adrian laughed. It was a dry, barking sound that sent a chill down my spine. "Like last time? When your fiancée burned out her womb at the Shadow Market while you stood by and watched, Demyan? Or when you threw her out—*pregnant with your child*—into the slums of Noctalis, because she didn't fit your precious 'bloodline purity plan'?"

  Demyan flinched, and for a fleeting moment his gaze dropped to my bare feet visible beneath the hem of my thin silk nightgown. What crossed his face was a collision: remnants of a proprietary hunger and cold, sneering contempt.

  "You're here... in his house... dressed like *that*." His voice shook with suppressed rage. "Disgracing the Voronov name even after you were cast out. Shameless."

  "I don't carry your name anymore," I said, pressing my shoulder harder against the cold door frame. Every word cost me. "And Eliza... you were there. You saw what she did."

  "She wasn't in her right mind!" Demyan snapped. His voice broke into an unnaturally high pitch, and his right hand—clutching the hilt of his sword—began to shake hard. He wasn't meeting my eyes; his gaze darted across the wall behind my shoulder, as though searching for something there to confirm his own words. "Eliza was defending the Clan's honor. She explained everything to me afterward... that flash at the Market wasn't Light, Anya. It was the hungry vacuum of your Void, a parasite pretending to be a spark to trick us! My fiancée was trying to burn that infection out before it consumed you entirely. And look at yourself now! You've become—*darkness that devours everything living*."

  He turned to his fighters, gripping a scroll bearing a heavy wax seal with newfound confidence.

  "I'm here under an Emergency Mandate of the Council, Adrian. The outer cordon of battle-mages let me through the moment they saw Morozov's signature. Anya Belskaya has been designated a Class One threat. A spontaneous Entropy discharge in a residential sector is a death sentence. I'm taking her to the Citadel for 'cleansing.' And if you stand in my way—that will constitute rebellion by the entire Shadow Clan."

  "Rebellion?" Adrian stepped forward, and the shadows at his back surged, spreading like the wings of a vast bird. "Demyan, you were always a poor strategist. You've walked into my home, threatened my woman, and you expect to walk out on your own two feet on the strength of some paper signed by old man Morozov?"

  Demyan flinched as if struck. His face twisted.

  He looked at me. In his eyes was not merely fear. It was the blind, desperate faith in a lie that had been fed to him piece by piece, so he could sleep at night. I could see it with terrible clarity: he had *chosen* to believe Eliza. Because admitting that his "perfect fiancée" was a cold-blooded killer would mean admitting that he himself was too weak to protect me—or his own son. The lie was his only shield from a truth that would have crushed him.

  "Anya..." he whispered. His gaze moved over me. I watched two realities collide inside him. The thin, near-translucent silk of my nightgown, my bare feet on the cold marble, Marta's blood on my hands—the portrait of a victim he should have protected. And beside it: the black aura of the Void, scorched eyes, the ash of an assassin at my feet.

  "How could you become... *this*?..." His voice broke. He shook his head, trying to shake off the image. I could see him fighting with himself—logic screaming that Eliza had lied, fear whispering that the truth would destroy his world. And fear won. "No... Eliza was right... You're a dead zone. A dangerous anomaly. She warned me... I didn't want to believe it, I thought she was jealous, but now I *see* it! I see it with my own eyes!"

  He stepped forward, his sword trembling. His voice rang with not conviction but that hysterical edge of a man who willingly draws a blindfold over his own eyes rather than face the abyss of his own ruin.

  "I saw what you did to the column at the Trial and the artifact at the auction." He all but spat the words, his voice rising as if he were trying to shout down his own common sense. "I thought it was a trick back then. A chemical stunt, or illusion magic. But now... you killed a man. You *erased* him. Eliza was right! She said there was a monster inside you—one that *ate our child*!"

  "Liar!" I cried.

  "*You're* the liar!" He stepped closer. The sword in his hand shook, and I watched the blue flame of the blade dim, consumed by my background radiation. "You said she killed him... but Eliza explained everything! She was trying to destroy the Darkness inside you! The very vacuum I can *see* right now! It was an act of mercy—and you twisted it into murder!"

  A shadow of real pain crossed his face, quickly swallowed by furious, frenzied denial. He remembered the Shadow Market. He remembered the fire in Eliza's hands. But to acknowledge it was to acknowledge himself as an accomplice. And so he chose the lie.

  "The heir of the Voronov Clan died because of your connection to the Void. You are a monster, Belskaya. And I will destroy you to clear my conscience."

  "Liar," Adrian said flatly. "Or a coward. You were at the Council. You heard the Inquisition's recordings, you saw the alchemists' reports. You know everything, Demyan. But to admit it would mean admitting you shared a bed with the killer of your own child. And you can't face it. So you choose to believe in the 'anomaly,' because Eliza's lie is the only thing keeping your world from finally crumbling to dust."

  Demyan covered his face with his hand. His shoulders sagged. For a moment, the mask of the Lord of Winds cracked.

  Only for a moment. He lowered his hand. His face went to stone again—though his lips had turned white.

  "She comes with me! That's an order! *Seize her!*"

  Demyan snapped his hand in a sharp, frantic gesture. He wanted to bury his shame beneath the weight of a command. He wove his fingers together, forming a Wind Talon—a third-level combat construct. The air around his hand thickened, shaped into a translucent blade capable of cutting through steel.

  "Don't make me use force, Adrian!" he shouted. "I'm a Council representative right now! My status is inviolable!"

  The blade left his fingers.

  It flew exactly half a meter.

  Then it fell apart.

  It was pathetic. The proud, blazing structure of the spell simply... *rotted* in flight. The entropy saturating the hall devoured its mana-framework faster than it could stabilize. The Talon dissolved into grey smoke and scattered as ash on the marble, never reaching Adrian.

  Demyan stared at his own hand. He tried to reassemble the construct. Again—fizzle. Sparks. Rot.

  "Your magic doesn't work here," Adrian observed calmly. He hadn't moved an inch. "This is my house. My rules. Anya's Entropy is locked to aggressive mode right now—it's consuming foreign structures. Your spells, your shields—it treats them as refuse. Thank whatever gods you worship that she's unconsciously restraining the field and leaving the air in your lungs alone. Otherwise, you'd already be choking in a vacuum."

  The Wind Hawks faltered. Watching their commander's magic dissolve into nothing was more terrifying than taking a fireball to the face. It shattered their understanding of the world.

  "Where are... where are your people, Chernov?" Demyan rasped, looking around wildly. "Cain and the others? Are you alone?"

  "My people are currently cracking open the Sphere of Silence your personal assassin draped over this wing," Adrian answered, his voice like ice. "Until they break through the Void barrier, it's just you and me in here. And Anya."

  The world around me began to collapse.

  I could see them, but as if through glass thick with rain and grime. Grey patches bled in from the edges of my vision, slowly swallowing the colors. Demyan's face dissolved into a pale smear. I blinked, trying to clear the murk, but it only worsened. My optic nerve blazed as if a high-voltage charge had been run through it. Entropy didn't only destroy enemies—it was burning the bridge between my eyes and reality.

  The magic around Adrian boiled. The air crackled. Shadows peeled away from the walls and transformed into sharp spikes. Temperature plummeted to zero within a heartbeat. Frost bloomed across the floor.

  The situation had reached its breaking point. One wrong move and there would be a massacre.

  I was standing behind Adrian's back.

  And then I felt it.

  A smell.

  Not ash. Not sweat. Not the acrid bite of scorched air.

  The smell of *fear*.

  It was coming from Demyan. Dense. Clinging. Faintly sweet.

  But not from him alone.

  The Wind Hawks—those elite killers who had survived dozens of hot zones—were afraid too. I felt it. Their auras pulsed with grey flares of panic.

  One of them pulled the trigger. Was he a lunatic, or was it the reflex of an old soldier?

  *Click.*

  No shot.

  *Click-click-click.*

  The soldier stared at his weapon in horror. The rifle—reliable as bedrock—had jammed. But not mechanically. The metal of the barrel had begun to... *flow*. It was changing shape, going soft as putty. The trigger guard dripped down his finger in a black viscous stream. The sight ran down onto the receiver.

  Entropy.

  It wasn't only suppressing magic. It was dissolving the structure of matter itself. In this house, soaked through with Adrian's power and my own, complex mechanisms ceased to function. Springs lost their tension. Firing pins wore smooth in seconds. Powder in the rounds went damp in an instant.

  "Drop it," Adrian advised the second soldier, who was also trying to work his bolt. "Before it goes off in your hands."

  The soldier flung the rifle away. It hit the floor with a dull thud. Entropy, sharpened by my unthinking rage, bit hungrily into complex structures—cocking mechanisms, firing pins, electronics. The metal of the rifles didn't simply rust—it melted, losing its cohesion, becoming a viscous grey sludge. But the field was not infinitely selective. I watched patches of decay creep across the black Aegis armor. The soldiers stumbled back, watching in horror as the composite plates began to crumble beneath their fingertips, baring living skin to the Void's breath. One more minute, and the field would have started dissolving *them*.

  They were unarmed. Stranded on hostile ground. Facing monsters they didn't begin to understand.

  Demyan's fear became palpable. It smelled of overripe fruit. A melon left to rot in the sun. Vinegar. Wet fur.

  The chemistry of adrenaline and cortisol seeping from his pores hit me like a predator's hunting call.

  My Hunger lurched inside me. Sharp. Aching. A chained dog catching the scent of meat.

  I stepped forward. My legs shook, but I forced them to move.

  "You wanted to take me?" My voice was quiet, raw, and no longer entirely my own. "Try."

  I raised my hand. My fingers curled into claws. I reached for his aura. I didn't want to strike. I wanted to *rend*. To draw life out of him thread by thread, savoring every instant of his terror.

  Demyan stumbled back. He tripped over his own soldier's foot and barely caught himself from falling.

  "Stay back!" he shrieked. "You're... you're insane!"

  "I'm a 'Void-Born,' remember?" I smiled. The blood on my lips made it ugly. "You said so yourself."

  But my body betrayed me.

  A cramp seized my stomach with such violence that I nearly buckled. The world lost its color. My body was failing. Blood gushed from my nose—hot and thick, flooding my lips. My hands shook so hard the bones rattled against each other. I could see only Demyan's aura, because a black veil of exhaustion had swallowed everything else.

  The only thing left in color was his aura.

  Yellow. Pulsing. Filthy. It looked like a festering wound. Like a rich, ripe piece of energy, ready to burst.

  Saliva flooded my mouth. Dense, viscous—the saliva of a predator.

  I stepped forward. Moved out from behind Adrian's back.

  "Leave, Demyan."

  Quietly.

  He looked at me. And recoiled.

  I don't know what he saw in my face. I was trying to hold the mask. But my shields were fracturing. The Void was seeping through. The gaze of a creature for whom a person is nothing but a collection of joules.

  "Anya?" His voice wavered. "You're... you're pale. You have blood dripping from your nose..."

  "Leave," I repeated. My teeth scraped together.

  It was physically *painful* to hold myself back. I didn't want to hit him. I wanted to *open* him. To tear that yellow aura apart. To press my lips to the source. To *drink* that fear. To the very bottom. To be full. To silence the gnawing emptiness inside.

  I drew a breath. The smell hit my brain like a drug. Dizziness.

  A step. Another.

  My hands reached for him on their own. My fingers curled, becoming claws.

  "She's unstable!"

  Adrian reacted without thinking.

  A heavy hand came down on my shoulder. His fingers clamped down—hard, painful—driving into my collarbone, pinning me in place.

  *Stay.*

  "Traumatic shock," he said to Demyan. "Get out of my house, Voronov. Right now."

  "I..."

  "*Out.*" Adrian's voice cracked like a whip.

  The shadows at his back reared up, shaping themselves into enormous talons. The air in the hall thickened to the consistency of cold syrup.

  Demyan retreated. He was broken. Humiliated. And afraid—not of Adrian. Of me. Of whatever he had seen in my eyes.

  He turned and all but fled the hall. His fighters backed out after him, weapons still raised but unable to fire.

  The doors slammed shut behind them.

  Silence.

  It crashed down on me like a slab of concrete.

  The adrenaline that had held me upright vanished. As if someone had cut a marionette's strings.

  Pain returned. Not sharp—dull, all-consuming. It rolled over me in a wave, washing away sight, hearing, thought.

  "Anya..."

  Adrian's voice reached me as a muffled echo from beneath deep water.

  I swayed. The floor tilted beneath my feet.

  Darkness.

  It wasn't frightening. It was soft. Warm. A mercy.

  I fell into it, and the last thing I felt was Adrian's arms catching me an instant before I struck the marble.

  And then the world was gone.

  I saw his dreams. Dreams of a light blacker than the deepest night. I saw Marta, who combed out my hair in the Obsidian Palace, her hands smelling of fresh bread and lavender. *"Don't be afraid, child,"* she whispered. *"Darkness is only the absence of light, and you... you are what fills the void."*

  Then Demyan came. He formed in the center of this ashen dream, his face contorted with greed and fear. *"You were mine! My finest investment!"* he screamed, his voice shattering into a thousand fragments. The air around him solidified to lead, crushing my chest, stealing my breath. But I was no longer a victim.

  I reached out my hand, and Demyan ignited in a deep crimson blaze. He screamed, but there was no sound. Only silence. That same viscous, dead silence of the Obsidian Palace.

  *"Anya... live."*

  Adrian's voice cut through the oblivion. Cold and scalding at once.

  I felt warmth in my hand. Someone was squeezing my fingers hard enough to make the bones ache. This was not Shadow. This was life. The last remaining spark I had not yet managed to annihilate.

  I wanted to open my eyes, but my eyelids were weighted with lead. My body was a dead thing, immovable, nailed to a reality I no longer wished to belong to. Yet I could feel Adrian carrying me. His steps resonated through my spine, rhythmic and heavy. He was breathing hard, with a rasp, and every exhale scorched my cheek.

  We were leaving. Away from Demyan, away from the special forces, away from the laws of the Council we had just ground to dust.

  *We'll come back,* I thought, sinking into a deeper layer of the dark. *We'll come back for every one of you.*

  And in that darkness, at its very heart, I felt, for the first time in three months, something like peace. Not the silence of a graveyard—the silence of a predator before the leap. I was not the Queen of Ash. I was the Void itself.

  And at last, the Void was sated.