Page 161 of Ashes of Honor

“Reina? Are you watching dear?” Ronan’s voice was calm as he pressed the knife deeper into her throat, the line forming no longer thin, now threatening to bleed her dry.

Soft whimpers spilled out between Reina’s sobs. She sat frozen atop her horse, tears streaking down her face. Her mouth opened and then closed, like she wanted to shout but couldn’t. All the words she’d wanted to say but the horror of it all muting her.

“My greatest disappointment,” Ronan said, his tone cruel and cutting.How dare he. How dare he guilt her with this!“Oh, how I’d ached for a better reunion. I wished better for you. For you both,Hunter. Do you see what happens when you’re too loud? More particularly, when you’re wrong.”

Amaia closed her eyes.

No.

Get up. Don’t you dare—don’t you dare give up!

I was on autopilot, body stepping forward out of instinct. Alexiares’s hand caught me, holding me with the understanding of what was about to happen. “Don’t,” he mumbled.

Not to me. To her.

The fire flickered. It started in her eyes. In an instant, she erupted.

Flames encased her, pouring from her as its own living, breathing thing. The image seared itself into my mind. With each blink, she was there. Her scream thundered from building to building, echoing the agonizing, haunting sound of self-destruction.

It mingled with Ronan’s startled shout, his confidence crumbling to the panic of no longer having the control. That flicker of terror when he realized she was more than he bargained for, more than he was equipped to beat, would’ve been honeysuckle sweet under different circumstances. The knife at her throat was useless now, hovered there, stuck.

Her screams stopped as she fell to her knees, the light in her eyes dimming, body bowing. A marionette puppet whose strings had been severed. She wasn’t gone. Not yet—not entirely.

I knew what she was doing. Understood it all too clearly. She wasn’t giving up. She was slipping into thatotherplace, that hollow space in her mind, so she could let go. Because she had to. She had to release her power, had to let it consume her, and she couldn’t do that—not if she still held on to the love she had for us.

There was no goodbye. Not in this family. Not between us.

Four eternal seconds passed between the moment Ronan’s blade kissed her throat and the moment she gave herself to the flames. Four seconds, and everything had changed.

“She’s burning out,” Alexiares said, panic bleeding into every word. “We have to help her.”

The words snapped me into action. I didn’t think. I just moved, shoving past him, leaving the civilians behind. They’d have to make it on their own now. She needed me.

Amaia needed me.

The first explosion was small. A burst of her flames that struck the ground a few feet away. The next was closer, more violent. I grabbed Alexiares as a blast nearly took him out, hauling him back with me, the earth turning soft underneath us to cushion the fall.

He dragged me up, but it didn’t matter. The old gas lines were already erupting, one after another, bursting in flashes of heat and light around us. It was too late. I knew it. My heart screamed otherwise, clinging to denial with a ferocity that left my chest aching. Denial was sweet, so damn sweet. It whispered that she might make it. That if I kept watching the screen, I wouldn’t see her die.

“I. Can. Not. Fail. Not again,” I muttered, accepting my new mission, the one I could control. The one she’d always held me to. If I could not protect her, then I had to protect them. One last mission, a final one signed off in her blood. “We won’t … we can’t. The gas lines … It’s her. We have to … we have to stay here. Because if she kills one of us before she goes down, she won’t survive it. She’d never forgive herself.”

“She has tosurvivefor me to give a shit what she wants first!” Alexiares roared back, his voice raw with anguish.

I couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t face the grief mirrored in his eyes. My focus stayed locked on the screen. Amaia stood there, still burning. The fire moved like it was alive, licking at her skin, weaving through her hair, but it didn’t consume her. Her movements were slow, deliberate, as she dragged herself to a chair in the center of the room, pulled herself up, then turned toward Ronan.

He scrambled back, his body trembling with an unnatural frailty, yet his eyes burned with unrelenting hatred. The guards around him were lifeless, their weapons scattered and useless. Malachai had vanished. A cockroach scurrying from the light. I knew he was out there somewhere, saving his own skin.

The camera caught the moment she stepped forward—staggered forward. Even through the haze of fire and smoke, I swear I heard her voice.

“I’m sorry,” she cried.

The camera fell, clattering to the ground. The angle shifted, capturing Ronan on his back, his face upturned, the reflection of her flames filling his wide, horrified eyes.

“Run! The street … It’s gonna blow!” Voices rang out behind me, panicked and desperate as they came running, searching for us.

I spun, spotting Tomás, Hunter, and Serenity racing toward us. The others trailing behind them. Tomoe, Reina, Millie. They’d followed us, their horses weaving through the wreckage.

A door creaked open somewhere—offscreen. Amaia’s fire whooshing to chase after oxygen. There was the shuffle of movement. Panic in the room.

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