The silence after Cameron’s death was a living thing, fed by the swirling green mist and the settling dust of the destroyed cell. Theron slumped against the wall, clutching his wounded shoulder, his face pale with pain and the dawning comprehension of a betrayal so deep it had rotted their foundations. His gaze, however, was locked on Elara and Kael.
On the space between them, which seemed to crackle with the aftermath of the touch.
Kael had put ten feet of rubble-strewn floor between himself and Elara, moving as if the ground itself burned him. He stood with his back to them, his shoulders heaving, not from exertion, but from some internal cataclysm. He stared at his own torn wrist, the one that had touched her, as if it belonged to a stranger.
“What,” Theron ground out through grasped
