Page 124 of Bitten, Marked, Obsessed

“You did it,” I whisper. “Youdrove it out.”

She doesn’t answer right away. Just nods, still watching her sister like she’s afraid to blink.

Then Elias appears at the tree line, still catching his breath, sword stained and brow furrowed.

“We’ve got a situation,” he says grimly.

Of course we do.

I stand slowly, Kendall rising beside me, one arm still protectively around Adora.

“What now?”

“Gideon’s Torch is scattered. Most of their command’s dead or fled. We’ve got a few captives in the southeast gully. Their whole chain of command fractured once the Hollowed left.”

“That thing was driving them,” Kendall mutters. “Whether they knew it or not.”

Elias nods. “Worse—Typhon’s Brood vanished.”

My stomach drops. “What do you meanvanished?”

“I mean no bodies. No trails. Just… gone. Like something called them off mid-battle.”

“The Hollowed,” I mutter. “It was in Adora. It had them connected. And when Kendall burned it out… they lost the signal.”

“They’re regrouping,” Elias warns. “Somewhere. I’d bet my life on it.”

I scrub a hand down my face. “PEACE?”

Elias scoffs. “Didn’t intervene. Never even saw them. Do you think they knew what the Brood was really up to?”

“No, or they would have intervened for sure. They were watching though,” I say.

“They wanted to see if we’d destroy each other,” Kendall adds quietly.

“More like hoping.”

“They’re gonna come knocking now that we didn’t,” Elias says. “And we sure as hell better be ready.”

Footsteps crunch behind us.

I turn and there he is.

Mathis.

Flanked by Vaan, whose smirk could slice glass.

Neither of them were at the fight. But here they are now.

Mathis’s face is unreadable. Regal. Cold.

“I heard there was a war,” he says.

I stare him down.

“You missed it.”

He looks past me to Kendall, then to Adora. His jaw clenches.

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