Her teeth gnashed. Her tail quivered. Her efforts were like a slug scaling a salt mine.

  Pain.

  Fire.

  Agony.

  Words that couldn’t contain what Rosalind felt. It was systematic, deliberate. Engineered. A single shot of Eitherite had splintered into humming shards, maggots made of glass.

  With each step, each micro-pulse of Hemarite through her system, the shard responded in kind. Her nerves frayed. Her muscle chewed through like a soggy rope. Cartilage liquefied. Bone split under pressure like old bindings. Her own leg was betraying her, inch by inch, melting with every step.

  This was why Eitherite-Lined Ceramics were banned, why anyone caught using them against demons was tried for war crimes. It was a corrosive hunger, engineered to eat your enemies alive. It refused to let you heal. It waited. Patient. Hungering. Cripping you will.

  “You don’t have to force yourself to walk,” Lucien said.

  The spy, the Aviar man, she knew very little. Walked to her side, his hardened expression, a side she rarely saw.

  Her tail coiled around the railing like bondage—tight, firm, keeping her upright through grit alone. The cargo ship rocked, sloshing beneath them like a stomach on liquor, the sway testing every tendon.

  She didn’t flinch; she didn’t turn to face him. She kept it all inside, bottled it up, and threw the key away.

  “I said I’m fine,” she snapped, but her quivering voice said otherwise.

  Lucien frowned, something unreadable behind his sharp stare. A fragment of the man she first met, wanting to reach out.

  Then—

  “Stop being stupid. You know better. Rosa.”

  Better?

  She gritted her fangs, the audacity of this prick. She knew the cost already, knew this leg would melt. So what?

  She’d use it while it was hers. Walk until it gave out.

  Prosthetics couldn’t replace muscle. Couldn’t surge like flesh could.

  Mechanical replacements were trash—bulky, slow, hackable. She wasn’t strapping such weakness to her body.

  Just a few more steps. Let it burn. Let it bleed.

  Then maybe she’d scream. Beg for a slow release.

  “Rosa,” Cass said.

  Her voice cut like ice, puppeted into sirens’ lips.

  But this time, Rosa flinched. That wasn’t Cass speaking.

  The Neurite-blue glow still shimmered in the girl’s eyes—faint, empty.

  She didn’t even need to look to know who it was.

  “Get out of her already,” Rosa said, “Talking through a teenage girl is a little tasteless, even for you.”

  Cass’s expression twitched. Her mouth moved, but it was Lucien’s frown she mirrored.

  “It’s for her own good,” he said. “We can’t risk her doing something stupid.”

  “She’s a siren half our age,” Rosa said. “And you’re burning your reserve to babysit her? Lu, this isn’t like you.”

  Lucien’s wings cracked, his glare like a barrel aimed at her skull. “She’s dangerous. But you wouldn’t know, since you keep passing out.”

  He stepped closer. Not floating… moving.

  There it was again, that flicker of black behind his eyes.

  She’d never seen his fangs bared like that. Never felt that vibration skitter out of his core like a slicing pulse.

  It didn’t take much for her to identify it.

  They might’ve left the source of the Voidium behind.

  But something still crawled in his insides, infected his bones and writhed between the man and the dark abyss.

  Those eyes said it plainly.

  Lucien wasn’t himself.

  He wasn’t the man she grew to know.

  He could kill her.

  Maybe he wanted to.

  But mid-limp, she hesitated, lingered a moment too long.

  She knew almost nothing about his past, nothing about how the boy became a spy. She’d fought with generals, stabbed Monarchs, and created inquisitors. But she’d never met a man who moved like him, like he didn’t belong to any of it.

  A blood-stained knife without a title, home, or identity.

  Was his name even Lucien? Or was that another lie? Another way to play the system, and maybe her foolish, stupid little heart. She would need to know. No, she was within her rights to know. They had to be past secrets by now.

  “Lu,” she whispered.

  Her strength faded, her titles in the garbage, her duty on the side.

  She took a step, a single, fragile inhale, “Lu?”

  However, looming like a knight, an inquisitor who found its target, he stood over her, her back scraped the cargo hold, his scorching breath growling down her neck.

  Who was this man? Where was carefree, coy, slippery, always playing Lucien?

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  The Fairy flapped once, his eyes flickering blue, his Neurite edging her mind, the puppet strings ready to command her to his bidding.

  “Just do as I say. I’m trying to protect you. It’s all I’ve ever done.”

  His fingers wrapped around her neck, coiled like chains, cold and suffocating. His controlling touch pressed into her skull, demanding she listen. Told her to obey.

  Rosa gasped, her neurons firing back in protest, her fingers losing the fight.

  “Lu- stop. You’re hurting me. Lucien!”

  “Let me protect you. It will only be a moment. I can’t let you die again, darling.”

  And in that spark, she saw this darling, his memory implanted like her own, pushed for her to remember.

  But Rosa gritted her fangs, clenched her fists, and hissed steam.

  He wasn’t talking to her. He wasn’t looking at her; he saw someone else!

  She wasn’t his darling. She was never his darling. Rosa has killed that woman, slit that whores throat. Put her in her filthy place.

  Then she tethered her fingers like hooks, nailed inside the transparent flesh, and pulled his cheating wing.

  “You made a promise!” she screamed.

  But Lucien only roared, his voice like a detonation, Voltite blasting through his lungs like a cannon of deafening air. The small room ignited like needles in her ear, knives slicing her drums.

  But it was now or never; she needed to do it, her fangs dripping with saliva.

  She didn’t think. Didn’t aim. Just moved.

  She was done being prey, done with being second.

  Fangs sank in like a reset switch.

  A wet neck, a flood of Voltite Hemarite and Neurite backflowing into her system. And most importantly, Voidium. The last slurp filled her lips before she turned and spat—the chrome liquid splattered on the hull.

  First, Cass fell, followed by Lucien stumbling back, confused, blinking like he had just woken up.

  He blinked at her like he didn’t know where he was. Like he didn’t know her.

  And just like that, she forgot why she ever trusted him.

  “Rosa?” he said.

  She huffed, ready to break him down piece by piece—

  Was he still not over that woman? After all these years?

  But then—

  Her boot stuck. Her heel hissed.

  She looked down.

  And her skin flashed yellow.

  The Eitherite in her bloodstream had just been given an enormous fuel source.

  And that instant her bone melted, her toes crumbled.

  Her flesh screamed hot, her voice howled dry, her mind echoed numb.

  Losing her leg? No, she was going to lose a hell of a lot more.

  She felt the bone snap like a twig. Her arms crashed into the deck, her whole side burning into the metal.

  “Fuck fuck fuck!”

  She rolled like a body on fire, her mind scrambling to tap her receptors.

  Eitherite wasn’t just volatile. It was Voltite’s twisted twin.

  A charged battery looking for a circuit. A chemical that wanted to bond—with everything. The wall, the floor, every cell in her body, just another molecule to absorb and break apart.

  Rosa just had to hope that her own body could neutralise it. She couldn’t rely on Hemarite. Neurite was useless. So she dipped her toe further in and funnelled everything she had, every last Voltite reserve.

  Her whole tattoo flashed green. And she sparked and sparked, each roll like she was smothering out a flame. A Green vs Yellow.

  “Give back my fucking leg.” She howled.

  Rosa screamed as her leg started to melt, her bone and her flesh all becoming a yellow atomised goo.

  Then—

  It returned to solid.

  A crackle of chrome ran down her skin.

  Atoms binding. Reversing.

  Not rebuilding flesh—replacing it.

  Particles bound like glue. Fast, foreign, unstoppable and she could only stare.

  A solid chunk of glass remained where her leg had been.

  Not flesh. Not muscle. A crystallised limb from thigh to foot.

  She stared at it, devoured every crack, every gleam of light.

  It was so pretty, so dazing, so unnatural.

  “Solid Eitherite?” she muttered. “At best, it can be used like powder due to the destabilised structure.”

  She frowned, each hypothesis more baffling than the next. Her tail frazzled in stupor.

  Rosa looked up, and Lucien was just as confused as she was.

  “Where… are we?” Cass blinked, dazed.

  Lucien’s head turned sharply. “Rosa… what happened?”

  She didn’t answer.

  Didn’t move.

  She just stared at her leg—

  She didn’t feel pain anymore—just nothing.

  As if it might float off without her.

  “I… don’t know.”