In heaping gulps, I forced air down over my mate’s terror as I helped Celissia move Mora to the side of the square. A shattered orb of mystlight turned the blood streaking the ground into a glimmering smear of death. I dropped to the stone, cutting off my sleeve and putting pressure on the wound.
I swallowed again over my tight throat.
No, that was Lancaster’s panic as he struck the beast in the chest with his bare hands, sending it stumbling into darkness, and he fell to his knees beside his sister. Celissia propped her up, searching for a way to heal her without any supplies and such weak sorcia magic. She uttered words I couldn’t hear over her talisman, ducking closer to Mora.
“Why isn’t it healing?” Lancaster asked as he held his sister.
“Her magic is too weak,” Celissia answered. “It’s been deteriorating for months.”
Ever since that corpse bit her in the catacombs, ever since Ritalia’s bargain tied her to life, her magic had been depleting.
“Mines not working on it either,” Lancaster griped.
Mora was fading, her stuttered words barely audible.
“It’s her body,” Celissia said. “It’s rejecting both of our healing now that her own magic has faded so far. It doesn’t want it.”
“What can we do?” Lancaster forced out, voice hollow. It was the first time I’d ever heard him sound truly lost. My chest was flooded with his heartache and desperation.
“Please, Celissia,” I muttered as I applied pressure to the wound. “Is there anything?”
Celissia chewed her lip, flinching as the nearest building shuddered, glass shattering. “There’s not…”
Defeat washed over her features. One I understood as a healer. It was our mission to save lives, and when we failed, it was such a personal loss. To see a spirit leave this world when we’d taken life on as our vow was salt in the wound of a death.
Lancaster held his sister’s hand as they knelt in a pool of mystlight. He pumped wave after wave of healing magic into her, but it didn’t matter. The frenzy down the bond grew more riled as every desperate moment ticked by. As she slipped away.
Mora gaped up at us, not able to speak over the pain through her abdomen. But some sort of understanding passed between the brother and sister who, for centuries, only had each other.
And when Mora’s eyes landed on me, the trust in them was like she was handing her brother into my care.
Gingerly, Lancaster scooped Mora off the ground and kicked open the nearest shop. A bookstore, it appeared. Fitting given how much Mora loved books. Hopefully they would comfort her.
Mystlight flooded the aisles as Lancaster laid her on the front counter. He bent to whisper something in his sister’s ear, and I gave them a moment, but just as her eyes slipped closed and Mora’s chest stilled, a snarl sounded right outside.
Celissia and I whirled toward the door, determined to guard Lancaster while he finished his goodbyes, but something white hot burned along the string in my chest.
“Goodbye, sister,” Lancaster whispered behind us. “And thank you. Go be with Mother now.” Then, Lancaster bolted past us, and the heat in the bond roared.
Vengeance.
His wrenching desire to tear through the beast that took his sister from him. He had all other emotions shut down, ready to commit whatever brutality this war took—no matter who it hurt.
No remorse and no conceding.
And I was on his heels, following the thrumming string in my chest.
We slammed the door into the bookshop, and Lancaster piled crates and broken tables and chairs before it. Anything he could grab, tossing the furniture around as if it weighed nothing. Celissia and I shoved a fallen bust of the Angel his way.
A second snarl had us all turning. I stumbled back into Lancaster’s chest, and he dragged me a step behind him, resolve blatant in his grasp.
Two shadowed beasts bore down on us, teeth the length of my hand gnashing together. Crimson shone along the tips.
Mora’s blood.
That wasMora’sblood flying with each deadly snap. The blood of the fae Goddess coating this otherworldly beast.
Lancaster curled his arm tighter around me, his fingers digging into my hip as he pressed back, like every point of contact was a reassurance that I was here and okay. Celissia was a step behind us, too.
