His heart slammed against bone. Breath came in sharp, ragged bursts. The image of Amira (alive, breathing, standing there) burned behind his eyes like acid.
Alive. How the hell was she alive?
He lunged for the curtain.
Seraphine was already there.
She slid between him and the doorway in a blur of silver hair and cold certainty, palm flattening against his chest with enough force to stop him dead.
"Easy, killer," she murmured, voice velvet over steel.
He grabbed her wrist hard enough to bruise a human. "Move."
"No."
"Seraphine, she's…"
"I know exactly what she is." Her eyes locked on his, crimson and unyielding. "And you are two seconds from charging out there like a wounded animal. They will eat you alive."
His chest heaved. "I have to know."
"You will." She pressed harder, grounding him, forcing his lungs to slow. "But not like this. Not shaking. Not bleeding panic from every pore. You walk out there like that and they own you."
The heat inside him roared, desperate to break free, to demand answers with fists and fire.
Seraphine leaned in until her lips almost brushed his. "Breathe with me."
He tried. Failed. Tried again.
"Good," she whispered. "Again."
Slowly, agonizingly, the roar quieted to a growl.
She never moved her hand from his heart.
"You saw her dead," she said, soft and lethal. "I believe you. I saw the blood too. But she's breathing now, and that means someone played us both. Someone very clever."
Her thumb traced a slow circle over his shirt, right where the heat pulsed hottest.
"So we play cleverer."
Tobias stared at her, rage and terror and something rawer colliding behind his ribs.
"Why are you doing this?" he rasped.
Seraphine's smile was small, sharp, and terrifyingly honest.
"Because the idea of you broken somewhere I can't reach you is unacceptable."
She brushed her knuckles along his jaw, gentle and possessive.
"And because whoever did this to you just made it personal." Her voice dropped to a whisper that licked down his spine.
"We're going to find out who. We're going to make them bleed truth. And then we're going to burn their lies to the ground."
She stepped back one inch, just enough for cold air to rush between them.
"Together," she said.
Tobias exhaled, shaky but steadying.
The heat inside him didn't fight her anymore.
It listened.
He nodded once.
Seraphine's smile turned feral.
"Good boy."
She turned toward the curtain, fingers flexing like claws.
"Let them think you're still the lost little hybrid."
She glanced back, eyes glowing soft crimson in the dark.
"They have no idea what they just woke up."
And for the first time since that horrible night, Tobias felt something colder than fear settle in his bones.
Purpose.
Amira was alive.
Someone had staged his nightmare.
And Seraphine was right.
This wasn't over.
It was only getting started.
He stepped forward, shoulder to shoulder with the vampire who had just claimed him in front of the entire room without saying a word.
The curtain waited.
The truth waited.
And whatever came next, he wasn't walking into it alone.
He was walking into it ready to burn.
Tobias stared at Amira, lungs burning, heart trying to tear itself free of his ribs.
Alive. She was alive.
The relief hit first, a wave so violent it nearly buckled his knees. Then came the rage, white-hot and blinding.
He took one step toward her, out from the living quarters he was given, voice raw and shaking.
"You let me believe I murdered you."
Amira didn't flinch, but her eyes shimmered.
His voice cracked like breaking glass. "You let me wake up covered in your blood. You let me carry that for days."
"I know." Her words trembled. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. But if I had not moved, if I had spoken, they would have killed us both."
Tobias's hands curled into fists. The heat inside him surged, answering the storm in his chest. "How?"
Amira paused then slowly as if not scare a wild animal, spoke. "I switched with Gail and used magic to make her look like me and I he before I left."
Seraphine's cool presence slid against his side like a shadow finding its owner. Her fingers brushed his wrist, grounding, possessive.
"Breathe," she murmured, low enough only he could hear. "Let the anger sharpen you, not break you."
He turned to her, voice rough. "You knew."
"I suspected," she corrected, eyes never leaving his. "Now we know."
Mara watched them both, calm, calculating. "The people who staged this want you broken. Guilty. Controllable. They failed."
Amira took a hesitant step closer. "Tobias. Please. I never wanted you to suffer like this."
He laughed, a jagged, humorless sound. "Then why does it feel like everyone's playing me?"
Seraphine's grip tightened on his wrist, almost painful. "Because they are," she said, voice silk over steel. "And I'm the only one who never lied about what I want."
The heat flared again, hotter, answering her like it recognized the claim.
Amira's gaze flicked between them, something complicated flashing across her face. Jealousy? Fear? Recognition?
Mara spoke into the silence. "You're changing faster than we expected. The resonance isn't waiting for permission anymore."
Tobias's vision pulsed gold at the edges. "What does that mean?"
"It means," Seraphine said, stepping fully in front of him, back to Amira, shielding and claiming at once, "that someone is running out of time to control you. And they're getting desperate."
Her hand slid up his arm, cool fingers curling around the nape of his neck. She pressed close, body to body, voice dropping to a whisper that licked down his spine.
"Listen to me," she said. "You are not their weapon anymore. You're mine. To them what fire is to paper. And I, for one, can't wait to watch you burn their world down."
The heat inside him purred, low and hungry.
Amira's voice cut through, sharp with worry. "Tobias?"
He looked past Seraphine's shoulder.
Amira stood with her hand outstretched, eyes pleading.
Seraphine didn't move. Didn't let him go.
Two women. Two truths. One choice.
And the thing inside him stretched, patient, waiting to see which way he would fall.
Tobias closed his eyes.
When he opened them, the gold in his irises had spread.
"Tell me everything," he said, voice no longer shaking.
"Or I start asking questions my own way."
The room temperature spiked ten degrees.
Seraphine's smile was slow, proud, and utterly terrifying.
"That's my boy."
Whatever came next, it would not be on his terms.
And the Underneath was about to learn what happened when the monster they feared finally chose which side of the cage he wanted to stand on.
The heat inside Tobias wasn't rising anymore. It was devouring. The room warped at the edges. Colors bled. The air tasted of copper and lightning. His heartbeat was a war drum, too loud, too fast, shaking the bones of the world.
Amira reached for him, eyes wide with terror. "Tobias, breathe!"
He tried. He failed.
The ground rippled like water beneath his boots. His skin burned red-gold, veins glowing like molten rivers.
Mara pulled Amira back. "Stay away from him!"
Then the temperature plummeted.
Seraphine face appeared inches from his own, "Tobias," she snarled, voice cutting through the roar in his skull. "Look at me. Stay with me."
He couldn't answer. The heat was eating words, eating thought, eating everything except the need to protect, to destroy, to burn.
Seraphine spun toward the doorway as boots thundering, weapons clacking, too many heartbeats closing in.
She hissed, low and venomous.
The first intruder burst through.
Seraphine met him mid-air, hand punching through armor and sternum in one fluid motion. She ripped his heart out before his body hit the ground.
More poured in.
She became a storm of claws and shadows. A rifle butt swung for her head; she caught the barrel, crushed it, and drove the ruined weapon through its owner's throat. A blade flashed; she twisted, snapped the wrist, and used the stolen knife to open the attacker from navel to nose.
But they kept coming.
Trained.
Relentless.
Too many.
Tobias tried to stand. His legs wouldn't obey. The heat was no longer inside him. It was him.
Seraphine glanced back (just a heartbeat) to check he was still breathing.
That heartbeat was all it took.
A long blade drove straight between her ribs from behind.
Time fractured.
Seraphine's body arched. A choked sound left her throat. Crimson bloomed across black silk.
She turned, slow, stunned, eyes finding Tobias across the chaos.
Blood spilled from her lips.
"Tobias…" she whispered, reaching for him as her legs gave out.
The man behind her twisted the blade.
Something inside Tobias detonated.
Not heat.
Not rage.
Annihilation.
The air ignited.
Black energy erupted from his skin in a ring that shattered stone and flung bodies like dolls. The temperature spiked so hard the walls blistered. Every intruder within ten feet screamed as their armor melted into flesh.
Tobias rose.
Not walked.
Rose.
As though gravity had forgotten his name.
His eyes burned pure molten gold. Veins of living flame crawled over his arms, his chest, his face. The floor beneath him cracked in perfect circles around his feet.
He didn't feel pain anymore. He didn't feel anything except the need to make them stop touching her.
The man who had stabbed Seraphine looked up.
And knew, in the last second of his life, that he had made a mistake.
Tobias's hand closed around his throat.
The body turned to ash as black plumes of magic covered him.
The room became a furnace.
And Tobias, for the first time, was the fire.
Not the boy who feared the monster.
The monster itself.
And it was awake.
He stood at the center of the inferno.
Not Tobias anymore.
Not entirely.
Skin darkened to living ember, veins glowing like rivers of light beneath. Bones shifted with wet, grinding cracks, lengthening, thickening, reshaping him into something taller, broader, wrong and beautiful. Muscles coiled and swelled with impossible power. Claws burst from fingertips. Fangs filled his mouth. His spine arched as fae light crackled along it, shifter flux rippled through his limbs, wolfborn fury roared in his blood.
Every trait the Accord had forced into him woke at once.
And they screamed in one voice.
His heartbeat became thunder that shook dust from the ceiling. His vision burned gold, predator-sharp, seeing every drop of blood, every tremor of fear.
Amira, pinned against the far wall by the blast, stared in open horror. Mara dragged her back, voice low and urgent. "Don't move. He won't know you right now."
Tobias heard them.
He heard everything.
But he only saw one thing.
Seraphine.
On the floor. Blade buried in her chest. Blood pooling beneath her like spilled ink. One trembling hand reaching for him.
The monster inside him howled.
He crossed the room in a heartbeat that wasn't a heartbeat.
The remaining attackers tried to run.
They didn't make it three steps.
He was fire. He was vengeance. He was the thing the Accord had tried to cage and failed.
Then her voice cut through the inferno.
"Tobias."
Weak.
Broken.
Hers.
He turned.
Seraphine lay on her side, blood at her lips, silver hair soaked crimson, eyes dimming but still fixed on him.
"Tobias," she whispered again, fingers twitching toward him. "So beautiful."
The monster faltered.
The fire wavered.
He dropped to his knees beside her, claws retracting, fangs shrinking, gold bleeding from his eyes as the human in him clawed its way to the surface.
"Seraphine," he rasped, voice cracked and raw.
She smiled, small and bloody and real.
"There you are," she breathed.
Her hand found his cheek, cold against his burning skin. "Don't you dare try and disappear again."
The heat inside him collapsed inward, sudden and violent, leaving him shaking, human-shaped again, but forever changed.
He pressed his forehead to hers, tears cutting clean paths through the blood and ash on his face.
"I'm here," he whispered.
She closed her eyes, fingers going slack.
And for the first time since the blood began, Tobias was terrified.
Not of what he had become.
But of what he might lose before he understood it.
Whatever he was now was, it had a name.
And it belonged to her.