RIKA
My head was splitting open. That was the first thing I registered when consciousness dragged me back, this pounding behind my eyes so violent it had its own rhythm, its own heartbeat, like something was trying to crack my skull from the inside. My mouth tasted like copper and chemical, the specific kind of awful that came from poison working its way out of your system the hard way. Every muscle in my body felt like it had been wrung out and dropped on the floor.
But none of that was what my brain went to first.
Cade. Was he okay? Did Ronan get to him? Was the kid alive and in one piece or had I spent the last however many hours passed out while everything went wrong without me?
I forced my eyes open and the ceiling of my room came into focus slowly, the familiar dark wood beams, M
