The door hadn’t even fully settled into its frame before the click of the latch cut off the hallway.
Violet hadn't made it out. She was standing just inside the threshold, her back pressed flush against the heavy wood, her chest heaving as if the air in the corridor had been too thin to breathe. Her fingers were still clamped around her staff lanyard, white-knuckled and trembling.
I didn't think. The calculated discipline, the scouts, the rules, the armor—it didn't just crack; it completely incinerated. I slid off the edge of the taping table, ignoring the white-hot scream of agony in my bruised shoulder as my boots hit the rubber matting.
Two strides. That was all it took to eliminate the distance I’d spent months building.
"Jace—" Her voice was a breathless friction, a desperate atte
