The sapphire drop of blood on the limestone was still sizzling, eating into the rock like acid. Arkan didn’t wipe his face. He watched the obsidian-haired girl, the nightmare in a child’s skin, as she sat on the edge of the shadow, swinging her legs like she was sitting on a park bench instead of a god-forsaken ridge in the Emerald Throat.
"Status check, Daddy," the girl whispered, her voice a hollow, high-frequency resonance that set the moisture in the air vibrating. "Your heart rate is 140. Your bio-sync is at eight percent. You're bleeding out from the eyes. That’s very... human of you. Disappointing."
"I’m not your father," Arkan rasped, his human hand gripping the steel pry bar until his knuckles threatened to burst through his skin. The blue eye flared, a flickering, desperate str
