[Emma's POV]
The silence that followed Damon’s departure was not a true silence. It was the high-pitched, deafening ring left in the wake of an explosion. It pressed against Jaxon’s eardrums, filled with the phantom echoes of tearing reality and the sizzle of dark blood on stone. But above the tinnitus of shock, one imperative screamed in his mind: Move.
“No,” Jaxon gritted out, the word raw and mangled by pain. He pushed himself up from the wreckage at the stair’s base, his left shoulder a grotesque, searing knot of wrongness. He ignored it. Every ounce of his focus was tunneled on the figure at the center of the room. Emma. She knelt amidst the splinters of the doorway, a small, shuddering nucleus within a whirling corona of gold-veined shadow. Her eyes—those new, terrifying silver eye
