The alley stank of smoke and half-rotted vegetables. Serenyx shoved through it anyway, Lytheris practically dragging her by the wrist.
"Do you ever realize," she panted, "that our lives are just one long chain of 'bad ideas'?"
"Quiet," Lytheris barked. His eyes flicked over his shoulder. "They're faster than I thought."
Serenyx risked a glance back. The soldiers were already pouring into the alley, their armor scraping the walls, their swords glinting. Worse...worse by far, was that cold-eyed stranger. He didn't run. Didn't even need to. Every measured step he took seemed to shrink the distance between them.
The whispers above grew louder, more urgent, threading through the crack of sunlight between the rooftops. Her pulse thudded in time with them.
"Lytheris..."
"Don't!" His tone cut like steel. "Not again. Do you want to draw the entire city down on us?"
Her jaw locked. She didn't want to. But the wing of fire had already betrayed her once. And she could still feel it, coiled beneath her skin, restless, demanding.
Another soldier lunged. Lytheris kicked a barrel into him, sending both crashing to the ground. "Run!"
And they did.
But Serenyx knew...deep down, in the marrow of her bones, that running was pointless.
Because the stranger wasn't chasing them.
He was waiting.
Kaelthorn's men herded the girl neatly, just as he'd planned. The Shadow Sect fools were too loud, too clumsy. But his soldiers moved like shadows, driving her toward the river gate, the only escape left.
He'd studied enough hunts to know the truth: prey revealed its nature when cornered. And this girl, this Vessel, was anything but ordinary.
Kaelthorn slowed as they reached the bottleneck between stone walls. He raised a hand, signaling his men to fall back a pace. He wanted to see her decide. Would she fight? Or would she surrender to fear?
The boy with her, protective, reckless, snapped a blade free. Kaelthorn barely glanced at him. His focus was fixed entirely on her.
Her hood gone, her face laid bare, her hands trembling with restrained power.
When her eyes lifted, they locked with his. And in that moment Kaelthorn saw it clearly: she wasn't terrified.
She was furious.
He almost smiled.
The bottleneck closed around them. Soldiers on every side. Kaelthorn at the center like a storm eye.
Lytheris stood in front of her, blade shaking in his grip. "You'll have to go through me first."
One of the soldiers chuckled. "Gladly."
Serenyx's temper snapped.
"Enough!" The word tore from her throat, and with it came fire. Not the little wing she'd summoned before. This time it erupted in a sheet of gold and crimson, slamming into the stone walls. Flames licked upward, sparks raining down like falling stars.
The crowd beyond the gate screamed and scattered. Windows slammed shut. The whispers in the sky roared approval, their laughter filling her ears until she thought she might go mad.
Kaelthorn didn't move. Didn't flinch. His gaze pierced through the blaze like it was smoke.
And he said, softly, almost curiously: "So. The Phoenix breathes again."
Serenyx froze.
No one was supposed to know. No one.
Her secret, the one she'd sworn to hide until the end of her days, was laid bare in that single word: Phoenix.
Her knees went weak. Lytheris gripped her arm, steadying her, but it didn't help. The walls were closing in, the fire answering her pulse, and that prince's gaze, dark, knowing, merciless, held her pinned.
The hunt hadn't just begun.
It had ended.
And she was the prize.