KERES POV
*RISE LIKE SMOKE - ESME ROSE*
The room was coming apart behind me.
Gunfire cracked through the doorway. Silver rounds screamed into concrete. Someone hit the wall hard enough to make the whole table jump beneath Perse’s body, and Thane roared after them, deep and ugly and furious, the kind of sound that made the metal under my hands vibrate like even the table wanted to crawl away from him.
Aiden was shouting something.
I didn’t listen.
Couldn’t.
The alarms were screaming too, pouring red light over everything, over Perse’s pale face, over my hands, over the blood on her neck, over the bite I still had buried in her skin like my teeth were the only thing keeping her from slipping straight out of the world.
I heard all of it.
I heard none of it.
Because my entire univers
