All the Liberis in the room experienced it. Their eyes began to glow not blue or silver, but much darker. And every fiber of their bodies responded, burgeoning with the influx of pure power. If they be Dires and not Liberis, they’d be fornicating with whatever lay within reach.
It disgusted me. Isobel glowed with energy, her lips open and chest heaving as though close to orgasm. But like Galeran, her gaze upon me be filled with hate.
Had she ever truly felt anything for me?
Galeran stepped forward. “We discussed your sentence at length. I think we have come up with something that suits your crime.” Triumph gleamed in his eyes.
I assessed the surrounding Bellatis. If they planned to finish me right here and now, I be not going down without a fight. Time to enact my plan, such as it be.
I met the pale gaze filled with a rage bordering on madness. “I challenge you, Galeran.”
A ripple ran through the corrupt energy surrounding the Bellatis, combined with sideways glances and a physical shifting of weight onto the balls of their feet.
But Galeran’s eyes merely widened. And then he laughed.
“If you were still one of us, I would accept that challenge. But you are nothing more than a worm to me. And I do not accept the challenge of a worm.”
There be no mistaking the way every Bellati within earshot froze, or the frisson of shock that reverberated through their life essences. The code be the code. Galeran had just removed himself from it. Placed himselfaboveit.
My own breathing hitched. It had never occurred to me that he would declare me exempt from the right to challenge. I had never been good at judging Galeran. It be how I’d been so deceived in the first place.
I scanned the surrounding Bellatis, but not one met my gaze. So I straightened and met their leader’s stare. “You dishonor everything we be taught to believe.”
Galeran snorted. “What we were taught to believe is a lie.” He gestured to Isobel. “Proceed.”
The Liberi coven closed in again until they formed a ring around me. While it be a relief to no longer feel Galeran’s energy, their obscene power now concentrated on me. Flooding me with an urge to—to do what? It inflated me, but lacked direction and focus.
Each now raised a crystal that glowed the sickly color of dried blood. I’d never seen crystals that looked like that, but they were the focus of the unsettling power.
Finn stepped up next to Isobel. He also held a crystal, and as Isobel raised her own, she revealed the nightmare that she had embraced. “These crystals are infused with the blood of Bellatis,” she told me. “We made good use of those who fell at the mountain battle. Those you helped kill will now help us bind you.”
My gut twisted in horror. She’d infused crystals withBellati blood? What kind of a monster had she become? And what did she mean by bind?
It be time to leave this party.
But even as I spun away, the red glow jumped between the crystals of the coven members, forming a wall of pulsing red energy around me. It no longer radiated lust, but rather, pain. In a heartbeat, it traveled in lines from them, like the spokes on a wheel.
To the hub.
Which be me.
It be like being grabbed in a giant fist of agony, penetrating deeply into whom and what I be. And when Isobel gestured, it seized hold of my beast, and yanked it forward.
I had no control over the change, and my attempts to fight it only caused it to happen in wicked fits and spurts. The pain of it took my breath away. By the time it be complete, I be swaying on my feet.
The energy be not done with me. It coiled around my four legs and body. No matter how I tried to wrench away from it, it held me firm. I be completely at its mercy.
The strands contracted, and yanked my feet out from beneath me. I hit the ground hard, snorting my rage as the glowing ropes chased over me, holding me down.
Galeran pulled aside his cape to reveal the horn slung from the belt around his waist. Rather than a healthy blue or green, it glowed as red as the energy from the coven.
He strode to where I lay and smiled down at me, brandishing the spiral sword. “It seems fitting that the energies of those who died that day are with us here and now. Isobel didn’t just infuse their power into the crystals. She also put it into this horn.”
I bared my teeth as I looked at Isobel. “Instead of healing them, you sucked them dry?”
She shrugged. “Those who fell that day were the weak. We are stronger for their lack. And their life energy took us to a level we’d never imagined. We considered harvesting yours, as well. But I think we’ve come up with something much better for you. A slower end, but fitting.”
It be not until Galeran raised his spiral sword that I, finally, realized the depths of their evil. And by then, it be far too late.
