The boy shuddered, then coughed violently—black smoke curling out of his mouth.
Bea scrambled for her satchel. “I need salt. Iron. Something—dammit—he’s using the kid like a scrying stone.”
Lillith reached for her charm satchel. “We need to contain it.”
But it was too late.
The boy screamed again, and this time the force of it shattered the barrier Bea had thrown up. Magic exploded outward in a shockwave that knocked half the market off their feet.
Dominic grabbed Lillith, pulled her into his chest, shielding her with his body as the wave rippled through them.
And then it stopped.
Just like that.
The boy slumped unconscious, the runes still flickering but no longer spreading. His body limp. His breath shallow. The market still as death.
Dominic didn’t speak. He just stared at the boy lying on the cobblestones—marked and empty and no longer entirely human.
The prince wasn’t coming.
He wasalready here.
22
LILLITH
The boy lay between them, still trembling but breathing—alive. Barely.
Lillith’s knees burned against the cobblestone, scraped raw from sliding to his side without care. Her palms pressed gently against his chest where just moments before, jagged runes had blazed across his skin—burning, twisting, trying to consume him from the inside out. Now, those runes had faded to faint, scorched outlines, like the embers of a dying fire. His skin was damp with sweat, his breath shallow and rapid, heart fluttering beneath her fingers like a bird on its last wingbeat.
She felt her own magic trembling inside her, stretched to its edge. “Dominic,” she whispered, voice hoarse from chanting. “I think we did it.”
They hadn’t planned it. There hadn’t been time.
The moment the boy collapsed, Lillith’s magic had surged forward, desperate, raw, and unfamiliar in its intensity. Shadow magic wasn’t just affliction—itinfested.Itclung.The boy’s soul had been unraveling, thread by thread, when she touched him.
And Dominic had been the anchor.
He’d dropped beside her without hesitation, placing both his hands over hers. His warmth grounded her. His power—solid, feral, steady—wrapped around her like a second spell. It had pulled her back when the curse tried to take her down with it.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she’d gasped as the boy’s body seized.
“Yes, you do,” he’d said, his voice low but fierce. “Trust your magic. I’ve got you.”
Her hands had glowed then, the light from her palms softening from gold to silver. She hadn’t used silver magic since she was a child. It waspure,born of instinct, not training. And it had met the shadows in the boy’s body like fire against oil.
The runes had screamed.
Dominic had held the boy down while she chanted, the language older than her own bloodline, words taught by the stars themselves. Her spell wasn’t a cure—but it was a counterweight. It had shifted the scales long enough to give him a chance.
He thrashed once more—hard—and then stilled.
Dominic leaned in close, two fingers at the boy’s throat. “He’s got a pulse.”
“His soul’s still tethered,” she breathed. “Barely.”
“I can help with that,” Dominic muttered, already pulling off the charm he wore around his neck. It was a lion’s fang, polished smooth and etched with pride markings.
