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The capable female with long black hair I ran into in the train car is glaring down at me with a smirk. “Well, I’ll be damned. Ulara wasn’t lying when she said you had survived.” She leans down and wraps her fingers around my neck and easily pulls me to my tiptoes. “Ready to die for real this time?”

We’re alone in this section of the building. There must be private rooms, and I’ve found myself in the most lethal one.

By design, I’m sure.

Ulara hasn’t been playing nice.

She’s playing dirty.

Instinct makes me grip my attacker’s wrist. My left hand surges with the familiar pain that knocked me on my ass this morning. I can’t say it’s any less intense this time, but I’m more prepared for it, as if my body knows what to expect.

My fingertips turn black, then raw magic bleeds into the girl’s wrist, ripping a scream from her throat.

Did I just do that?

She immediately drops me, leaving me sputtering on the pile of towels that had been placed under the window, likely to mute my fall.

She knew I was coming.

The plan had been to kill me, silently, as if everything I’d just endured didn’t even matter.

Fuck all of you.

I grit my teeth together and growl as feral rage thrums through my system. I can’t tell what’s Arwan’s magic and what’s my own suppressed anger after a lifetime of being controlled, dismissed, and attacked. Monster Isle isn’t different from my old life in that regard. It’s only more obvious.

A bunch of girls bustle into the room at the same time, as do the guards who Ulara had been keeping occupied outside.

One of them shoves through the crowd, demanding to know what’s going on, but not before Sofia squeezes through the rest of them and finds me.

“Pretend you’ve been here this whole time,” she whispers. Tears well in my eyes. She’d been told that I’d survived, only to find out the plot against my life, and she had been ready.

“Sofia,” I begin, but there’s no time for pleasantries.

The room fills with tension as the shifter grabs the girl’s wrist, which causes her to scream louder. “Is it broken?” he demands.

The black streaks are gone, but there’s bruising left behind, and the bulge on the side of it doesn’t seem natural.

I have no idea how I could have broken her wrist. I don’t have enough strength to snap a twig without one of my tonics.

She screams again as the shifter pulls her arm. Ulara is quick to chide him. “They’re humans, you idiot,” she says as she draws the girl into her side. “Come on, Ferra. I’ll take a look at that wrist. You must have fallen on it.” A sharp look from the female shifter pins me in place, but she doesn’t inform the guard that I don’t belong in this group or that I somehow did this to her.

I have other enemies here, meaning it’s dangerous for me to stay. But it’s my word against hers. I can’t claim to be Godric’s bedmate and have any of the guards believe me, not if Ulara isn’t going to back me up.

My heartbeat thunders in my ears as I turn over everything I’ve learned about the female shifter in my head and reevaluate it. I’ve missed something.

Does she need my death to look like an accident?

Or maybe it has to be another candidate who takes my life without any repercussions?

Why does she want me dead, anyway?

This is the second time she’s stood by while one of the girls made an attempt on my life.

What’s your angle? I wonder, because my life depends on understanding Ulara’s motivations. I’ve been so worried about Godric, Arwan, and the mysterious Outcast that I haven’t stopped to look at what kind of threat the assigned guardian might possess.

Maybe her relationship with Godric isn’t as platonic as I had assumed and she’s jealous?

That seems too easy.