Smoke lingered in my lungs long after we’d staggered clear of the ruins. Every breath scraped like glass, every step felt stolen from death. The forest pressed in around us, silent except for the distant crackle of fire devouring what little remained of the clearing.
We didn’t speak at first. Words would have felt brittle in that moment, too fragile to bear the truth we had just uncovered. Kael—the man we had carried, defended, bled for—had been the Blacklist’s snake in our midst.
And yet, when I replayed those final seconds, his laugh rasped in my ears, mocking even as blood spilled from him. Go ahead. Kill me. They’re already here.
But his body hadn’t been among the dead when the smoke cleared.
That absence gnawed at me like teeth.
Adrian led us deeper into the forest, his expressio
