Chapter 15. Not Ready to Die

Aria was not in an infirmary.

She woke on a cot in a room that felt, smelled, and looked like a security vault. The walls were dull grey concrete, the floor polished steel, and the only door was a slab of reinforced alloy with no visible handle on her side. There were no windows, only a single, recessed vent near the ceiling humming with pressurized air.

This was not a safe room; it was a containment unit.

The immediate, searing ache of the magical tether had subsided, replaced by a constant, dull thrumming under her skin, like a healing sunburn. It was a phantom connection, an echo of Kade’s residual energy, and it kept her heart rate impossibly fast. She was utterly alone, yet she still felt the distant weight of his exhaustion, a leaden cloak draped over her own fear.

She sat up, her muscles screaming with the strain of the night before. The blast had drained her to the marrow. Her fingers still felt singed, and the area over her ribs, where the power had