A desperate, powerful scream sliced through the tense silence like a gunshot.
"THEO! ABOVE YOUR HEAD, TO THE RIGHT!" Ivansia's cry echoed from the top of the stairs.
Theo's head snapped upward.
There, standing at the landing, was Ivansia. Her face was pale as ever, but her violet eyes now blazed with an uncanny light, as if an invisible power radiated from deep within her.
Her whole body was tense, one hand lifted, finger pointing with absolute precision. She wasn't just shouting.
She was commanding. Her clear eyes seemed to pierce every movement of the thugs below, to read each subtle shift of their bodies, to see every hidden intention and the trajectory of every strike before it happened. She saw everything.
Some deep instinct inside Theo—a part of him that trusted Ivansia without question kicked in.
He jerked his head to the right just in time, dodging the machete that hissed through the air a hair's breadth from his scalp.
