“You did what?” I snapped at them, momentarily transfixed as the words left my mouth…like a ripple on a lake, the tenor pushed outwards and towards the walls.

The room strained beneath the tension. I blinked.

“Moira, we need your help right now—”

I tilted my head. His voice also gave off waves, but these were flexible, not hard or unyielding as mine were. I reached out to touch the almost invisible bending of light and sound.

The wave parted, and a dual echo filled my ears.

Strange…

“You were saying,” I murmured. Again, a ripple filled the air. Like the sun in a desert, the longer I stared at the distant wall in front of me, the more the ripples continued. They hit the walls in front of me, flattening with a ping against the hard surface.

“The beast is free in New Orleans—”

The almost invisible bending lines followed the direction of his voice. I pushed them backwards wanting to shove them down his throat at the obscenity of that statement.

And guess what?

They did.

The taut tendrils snapped and raced back inside of him. Laran—tall, broad, and strong as he was—clutched his throat in pain.

I smiled cruelly.

“You lost her?” I asked, this time focusing on War and not the power coursing in my veins, or the way the air practically sang.

There was sound in everything.

And I had power over sound.

“We didn’t lose her,” he ground out with a rough growl. I gave him a non-amused look and pushed those waves back inside of him. Harder.

The asshole choked, and I didn’t feel the least bit bad.

I couldn’t remember much before sleeping. Ruby had been having one of her Debbie downer moments and I told her to get over herself. Fuck them, brand them, and be done with it.

We didn’t have time for anything else.

Clearly, she had deviated a bit from that, somewhere along the way.

“You’re awake?”

The sound came from a different dumbass. I whipped my head around, relinquishing whatever hold I had over the ripples that caused Laran pain.

“Obviously.” My voice cut through the air like a scythe. Sharper than any blade, and it was well below a scream or a shout.

I was quite surprised when a crack split the air as it ran through the wall beside him. I arched an eyebrow, because that was just too fucking convenient to be anything but me. But I was just a banshee, and a half-breed at that…

But the wall had cracked.

And Laran had choked.

And Rysten was pale as a sheet.

“I’m assuming he told you then?” He flicked his eyes to Laran. Not quite angry, but also not kind. He hadn’t wanted me awakened.

Awakened…

Why did that sound so—I reached for my chest gasping for a tight breath, because I remembered. I remembered everything. The burning. The tear. The ripping in my back as my muscles were torn apart. The scorch as the flames ran through my blood, filling every nook and cranny with a volatile magic. It filled my very being, mixing with everything that I am.

It fused with me. Molded to me. Changed me.

The feeling of a knife carving into my forehead sent a fresh wave of anxiety as I rode the memory, lost in a flashback.

There was a heavy aching in my back where a weight that shouldn’t be there sat like a log. I reached out to brush the sweat from my forehead and pull the tangled hairs away from my face. My hand snagged on something sharp.

I pulled away. Blood. A thin line of blue blood ran down a cut in my palm. I frowned at the trickle of sapphire, and then I reached again.

Horns.

I had fucking horns.

Should I have been upset? Because an almost gleeful feeling began to fill me.

I turned and caught a glimpse of something large and blue and made of…flame.

Wings.

Those were wings. And they were attached to my back.

I had wings. I had horns. I was seeing waves in the air—and controlling them, for that matter.

But most of all, there was an incessant tugging in my chest. An invisible line that led from me straight to my blue-haired best friend. I’d felt attached to her before. She was my family after all, and apparently, I was her familiar. This was something different, though, and a sneaking suspicion sat on the edge of my mind. I grasped for it, trying to piece every bit of information that I held. Like smoke, it slipped through my grasp, but I wouldn’t give up so easily.

Something wasn’t right here.

“What am I?”

Rysten blanched. Laran sighed.

They were feeling nervous now? Shy all of a sudden, after they woke me up? I didn’t wait for them to start rambling. I pushed my way out of the door and walked down the hallway, passing both Julian and Allistair as I turned for the bathroom—and stopped dead in my tracks.

Black ashes. Broken glass. A mirror splintered into a million pieces.

There, in all the shards, was my reflection refracted a thousand different ways. I leaned over, aware of the silence as I picked up a single fragment of mirror and looked at myself.

A horned helmet atop two black wings.

The mark of Cain.

And it was branded on my forehead.

Well, well, well. It seems that somehow, in some way, I had transitioned.

“Alright pony boys, it’s time you start talking and tell me how the fuck I became a legion.” Pestilence choked on a cough.

“And then, we’re going to figure out how to get Ruby back.”