There was desperation in his voice, like there had been desperation in Amy’s. He gripped my throat, the whites of his eyes showing as he stared me in the face, and then he let go just as quickly. My skin didn’t feel like my skin as his fingers slid off of it. Slick with anxiety sweat, prickled with the goosebumps of cold, even though I was hot in this outfit, in a room with too many hot lights overhead, with muggy wet weather outside.

I got a grip on the shoulder of his v-neck shirt, and used flight to wing around him, twisting up his shirt and putting my arm part of the way around his neck. I started to pull my arm into a proper headlock. He knew how to break it.

Had I used my strength, the Wretch would have torn him to shreds. This was the scenario Uncle Neil had been preparing me for when he’d sparred with me.

I’d sparred with Dean too. Roughhousing and real sparring both. The difference was that Byron kept trying to grab me, but Dean had been more of a striker.

“What do I say to convince you!?”

Byron brought his leg around, hard enough to bruise my side, and tried to use the momentum of the kick to drive me closer to the ground, where he could try to grab me again. I wasn’t sure what he aimed to accomplish.

I knew what my goal was, though. To grab him, subdue him, and if we couldn’t have him become Tristan again, we would keep him from calling the wrong people until Goddess could bring more people onto her team.

Again, I tried the head-lock. I let my aura burn at ember-level heat, my cold breastplate pressed against his back, the icon at the pointed top near my clavicle pressing in between his shoulder blades. As I’d used my flight to stress myself, I put weight on his shoulders, pressing him down with more than just my physical weight. His legs buckled.

“Victoria,” he said, his voice strangled.

“You shouldn’t be able to talk that easily.”

“Apparently… perk of… water-focused power. Didn’t know,” he said, each couple or trio of words heaved out with a fresh breath.

I maintained the pressure. It was having some effect. I gave Sveta a look, a jerk of my head. She’d help. We’d bind him if I couldn’t make him pass out.

“Master–stranger,” he said. “Master–stranger protocols. You have to have studied them.”

Master–stranger. It put me in mind of my study sessions with Dean.

A second thought of Dean. It was refreshing and bright when everything else felt so dark.

“You’ve been a hero since birth. You studied this shit. You have to know this. They drilled us on it in Reach, you—” he huffed out a laugh. “You probably enjoyed it.”