Parker's gaze fell upon the remaining ones—the smirking bastards, the whispering cowards, the ones who hadn't laid a hand on him but whose laughter had hurt just as sharp but he didn't care about them. He tilted his head, almost playfully, as if sizing up the weight of their fear and looked at the real bullies.
The screams from the Voidhowls still howled from the portal. Louder now. Closer, somehow. As if pain itself was echoing back into the hall.
Parker pointed lazily toward the rippling gateway beside the throne.
"You'll be spending the next five years in there," he said, his voice dipped in velvet and venom, slow and deliberate like a guillotine lowering inch by inch. "Don't worry—"
He let that hang in the air, just long enough to feel the room tighten.
"You won't die."
