Chapter 18

Vesper

"Wait! Wait, stop—I'll talk!" The words tumbled out in a desperate rush. "I know where the treasure is! I'll tell you, just—just put the knife down—"

"Do you think I'm stupid?" Dante didn't even pause. "You'll say anything right now to save your skin. Literally. But pain has a way of cutting through lies, Vesper. So why don't we skip the bullshit and go straight to the part where you tell me the truth?"

Hope shattered like glass. The rage that had been keeping me upright collapsed under the weight of pure, animal desperation. I thrashed against the hands holding me, achieving nothing except making my shoulders scream in protest.

Magic. I needed magic. But there was nothing left, not even fumes. I'd burned through every last drop getting that ceiling panel open, and now I was just—

Just human.

Weak. Helpless. Pathetic.

The knife's edge touched my cheekbone. I felt the sting, the warm trickle of blood starting to flow. Dante's face was utterly calm, almost bored, like he'd done this a thousand times before and would do it a thousand times more.

This is it, I thought distantly. Disfigured, tortured for answers I don't have, then dead in some shitty warehouse—all because I couldn't resist a shiny piece of garbage.

My grandmother's face floated up from memory, her voice crackling through a video call I'd taken three years ago. "In moments of true desperation, child, your Fae blood will answer. It has to. Survival overrides everything else."

I'd never believed her. How could I? She'd never once visited me in person, never proved she was anything more than a lonely old woman spinning fairy tales to make herself feel important. Half-Fae were mistakes, genetic dead-ends, freaks who belonged nowhere and to no one.

Better to have been born fully human. At least then I'd know my place in the world.

At least then I'd just be weak instead of broken.

The knife bit deeper. Blood ran hot down my neck, soaking into my collar.

Then my heart exploded.

Not literally—though for a split second I thought it might. The organ seized in my chest like a fist clenching tight, then released in a violent, arrhythmic thud that sent shockwaves through my entire body. My vision whited out. My lungs forgot how to breathe.

Something inside me snapped.

"Boss—" One of the wolves holding me jerked back, his voice sharp with alarm. "Boss, her eyes—what the fuck is happening to her eyes—"

"They're changing color," another one said, sounding genuinely unnerved. "Shit, they're glowing—"

"Then I'll take them out first." Dante's voice was flat, final. The knife shifted, angling toward my face. "Hold her steady—"

Power erupted through me like a dam breaking.

It wasn't magic. Not the way I understood it. This was something older, something that had been sleeping in my DNA since birth, waiting for the exact right combination of terror and rage and desperation to wake it up.

My mouth opened. Words I didn't choose spilled out in a voice that wasn't quite mine—deeper, resonant, carrying a weight that made the air itself shiver.

"Weaklings. SCATTER."

The world shattered.

An invisible shockwave detonated outward from my body with the force of a bomb. The wolves holding me were ripped away like leaves in a hurricane, their bodies ragdolling through the air. The ones closest to me hit the far wall with sickening crunches—bones breaking, blood spraying, screams cutting off mid-breath as they crumpled to the floor and didn't move.

The ones farther back fared slightly better. They crashed into their flying companions, the human shields absorbing just enough impact to leave them groaning and conscious instead of dead or dying.

Dante himself was thrown backward, his knife clattering away into the darkness. He hit a support beam and slid down it, gasping for air, eyes wide with something I'd never seen on his face before.

Fear.

I didn't wait to see if he'd recover. My legs moved on pure instinct, carrying me toward the door before my brain could catch up. Everything was chaos—bodies writhing on the floor, shouts of pain and confusion, the acrid smell of blood and terror thick in the air.

Run. Run. RUN.

I burst through the doorway and into the corridor beyond, my heart still hammering that strange, too-fast rhythm. Behind me, chaos erupted.

"What the fuck is she?!" Dante's voice cracked with something I'd never heard from him before—genuine shock.

"Boss, you didn't say the target was this strong!" someone else shouted, panic bleeding through every word.

"How the hell does a half-Fae have that kind of power?!"

"SHUT UP!" Dante roared. "She's still half-dead and running on fumes—she's not getting out of here!"

But I was already running faster, my legs pumping through the warehouse's labyrinth of corridors with no plan except away, away, away.

My eyes burned. My chest ached. My hands were slick with blood—mine, theirs, I didn't know and didn't care.

All I knew was that something inside me had woken up.

And I had no idea if I'd ever be able to put it back to sleep.