Not so.

I tapped into my divination affinity, which I couldn’t recall ever using in battle. What to do with it? Rooke sometimes enlisted the help of her ghosts in a fight, but I hadn’t formed meaningful relationships with any yet.

At a loss, I cast out my divination magic to see what I could sense.

I blinked as the entire room filled with threads attaching to one or more people here. They connected the guys and then individuals to things I couldn’t see. I shook my head, trying to dispel the double vision. What the fuck?

I cut off the energy supply to my divination and then fell on my ass as a cage dropped around me, clanging loudly.

A dark rage rose in me like a cornered animal. I roared, seized by a force that flung me at the bars in its desire to escape the prison. I shook at the cage, and the very walls of the learning center shook.

I’d bring every one of them down to get out of here.

Harsh words streamed out of my mouth that was twisted in rage. I was going to kill and hurt. I was going to destroy.

A roar of war and deadly promises tore from me again.

The cage disappeared, and Wild was suddenly there, crowding over me. The hand I’d raised to plunge into his chest and rip his heart out lowered. Shock warred with rage. If anyone but him had tried that while I was in this state, I might’ve killed them.

Wild gripped my chin and sent me a vision. One of me. Black smoke poured from my skin, and black scales edged my face and the backs of my hands.

Fuck.

I’d just roared words in demon tongue too.

“The cage is gone,” he whispered quickly. “You’re not trapped. No one is going to trap you again. You’re free. You escaped that place.”

He wasn’t talking to me.

He was speaking to my demon—the one who’d been trapped for years and nearly died trying to return to me. My mouth dried. The cage just set her off big time. She’d slumbered since returning to me, and her panic was forceful enough to drag her from that healing sleep.

She’d just freaked out.

I took a deep breath, then another, feeling her curl into a ball within me.

I received another vision of myself from Wild. My scales were gone, as was the black smoke, but soot was smeared across the ceiling of the battle center. I crouched with Wild in a crater I’d carved in the stone.

I took one last breath and plucked up the courage to glance over Wild’s shoulder at the one person who’d seen too much.

Spyne’s eyes were wide. His pulse was rapid and breaths shallow.

As I met his gaze, his focus dropped to the book on his lap. Then, the grimoire lifted his attention to me once more before staring at the ceiling above me. He’d just seen me with scales and black smoke. He’d heard me speak in demon.

“Spyne,” Huxley said quietly from where he stood between us.

“No,” the grimoire replied.

He set the book down, then walked out of the battle center.

I closed my eyes. “Fuck.”

“Whose brilliant idea was it to cage her?” Wild spat, whirling on his friends.

Sven lifted his hands. “I didn’t know that would happen. Better to know now than in the middle of a real battle.”

That was of poor consolation right now.

Huxley ran his hands through his hair, repeating my expletive. “Spyne saw all that. He’ll figure it out.”