The world went very quiet.
I crossed the room and dropped in front of her, heart hammering in my chest.
"Ayla," I said, and her name came out broken in a way I couldn't fix.
She flinched at my voice and pulled back against the wall, and that flinch—her reflex to shrink away from me—landed somewhere that would leave a mark.
I made myself slow down. Made my hands stop reaching.
Then I saw her face properly.
One eye swollen nearly shut. Her lip split. The side of her face was red and already darkening, the shape of a handprint visible in the skin.
My throat closed.
The air in the room was thick—wrong—with sweat and panic and blood, the evidence of what had happened in here before I arrived.
"It's me," I said, keeping my voice as level as I could manage. "Ryker."
She shook. Visibly,
