Danika had never said those words to her. Not once in four years of college. Not once to anyone, Bryce knew. Not even Sabine.

Especially not Sabine.

Bryce watched the tears roll down Danika’s proud, fierce face. A lock clicked open in Bryce’s heart. Her soul.

“Close your eyes, Danika,” she said softly. Danika just stared at her.

Only for this. Only for Danika would she do this, risk this.

The gravel around Bryce began to shiver. Began to float upward. Danika’s eyes widened. Bryce’s hair drifted as if underwater. In deep space.

The asp shifter finished loading the bullets and pointed the gun at Danika’s face. His colleague smirked from a step behind him.

Bryce held Danika’s stare. Did not look away as she said again, “Danika, close your eyes.” Trembling, Danika obeyed. Squeezed them shut.

The asp shifter clicked off the gun’s safety, not even glancing at Bryce and the debris that floated toward the sky. “Yeah, you’d better close your eyes, you—”

Bryce exploded. White, blinding light ruptured from her, unleashed from that secret place in her heart.

Right into the eyes of the asp shifter. He screamed, clawing at his face. Blazing bright as the sun, Bryce moved.

Pain forgotten, she had his arm in her hands in a heartbeat. Twisted it so he dropped the gun into her waiting palm. Another movement and he was sprawled on the asphalt.

Where she fired that bullet meant for Danika into his heart.

His accomplice was screaming, on his knees and clawing at his eyes. Bryce fired again.

He stopped screaming.

But Bryce did not stop burning. Not as she raced for the semi’s cab—for the final asp now trying to start its engine. Danika trembled on the ground, hands over her head, eyes squeezed shut against the brightness.

The asp shifter gave up on the engine and fled the cab, sprinting down the road. Bryce took aim, just as Randall had taught her, and waited for the shot to come to her.

Another crack of the gun. The male dropped.

Bryce blazed for a long moment, the world bleached into blinding white.

Slowly, carefully, she spooled the light back into herself. Smothered it, the secret she and her parents had kept for so long. From her sire, from the Asteri, from Midgard.

From Ruhn.

The pure light of a star—from another world. From long, long ago. The gift of the ancient Fae, reborn again. Light, but nothing more than that. Not an Asteri, who possessed brute power of the stars. Just light.

It meant nothing to her. But the Starborn gifts, the title—they had always meant something to Ruhn. And that first time she’d met him, she’d intended to share her secret with him. He’d been kind, joyful at finding a new sister. She’d instantly known she could trust him with this secret, hidden thing.