Darius's POV
The red haze crept over my vision again, the way smoke squeezes through the seams of a tent—first only stinging, then thickening until it becomes everything. By the time I recognized it, I could see nothing but the shape of my own fury.
She stood before me, the blanket slipping off her shoulder, her hair clumped with tears and sweat, and with every ragged breath she drew, the whisper Cassian had planted in me tried to root itself deeper:
She brought the strays down upon us.
The sentence clattered in my skull like a war horn.
I didn’t measure my strength.
The hand that had held countless blades now closed around her throat—silent, practiced, blind. Her skin burned under my fingers, the artery beneath them pounding in a frantic rhythm, and with a single motion I hauled her
