After I’d left, Silas had kidnapped her and linked her life to those wards. And since I’d unwoven them . . .
“Tragic, isn’t it?” Silas crooned.
As the realization slowly sank in, a loud ringing filled my ears.
Imogen was dying, and it was all my fault. Silas had known I’d come to save her, and he’d used that weakness against me.
He took a step forward, but I barely registered the threat. My whole body was shaking with rage and grief — the feeling so powerful I found myself struggling to contain it.
“I am curious, Lyra . . . Wheredidyou uncover these new powers of yours?”
I didn’t reply. My skin was buzzing with that magic I’d tapped into earlier. Only now it seemed to have taken on a life of its own, thrashing against my insides, begging for release.
Silas had known about my witch half all along. He’d kept the knowledge of what I was tucked away — kept me weak so that he could use me without fear that I might one day double-cross him.
My lungs burned as I took a breath, fists clenched at my sides.
I wasdonebeing lied to, and I was done being used.
I wasn’t some poor injured bird Silas had taken in, only to keep locked away in a cage.
No. I was a bird of prey whose wings he thought he’d clipped, and I was ready to devour him whole.
I didn’t think before I flung my next dagger — aiming for Silas’s throat.
His reaction was effortless, the movement infinitesimal. So small that my blade still nicked the side of his neck before it clattered against the opposite wall.
He chuckled. Inside, I was seething.
Never waste energy on lesser prey. It was one of Silas’s fucked-up maxims.
He thought he’d break me by revealing Imogen’s fate, but he was wrong.
As the other hunters advanced, I closed my eyes and summoned the image of the glowing golden pattern I’d seen woven into the wards around Silas’s house. It wasn’t a rune — not exactly — but it had the same power as one.
With the pattern of those intricate golden threads burned into my mind, I threw up a ward around myself and watched the hunters’ faces fall in bewilderment and fear.
Satisfaction hummed through me. They couldn’t see me — had no idea where I was. The ward I’d woven around myself wavered as I moved, but I kept my focus on those glowing golden threads, and the illusion held as I advanced.
I went for Vince first — cutting a vicious slice across his throat with the edge of my blade. I felt no remorse as his eyes bulged, blood spurting from the wound.
I wheeled to face the others, whose faces had drained of color. Kyle was gaping at Vince’s crumpled form, but Alessio’s eyes darted around the room.
The predator inside me purred. He couldn’t track me. Hidden behind the ward, I had no scent. Made no sound.
It was every hunter’s worst nightmare.
Alessio’s gaze was unfocused as I stalked toward him. As if he somehow sensed me coming for him, he staggeredback, but there was nowhere for him to run as I plunged my dagger through his heart.
I’d had enough practice staking vampires that my aim was true. One sharp thrust to break through the breastbone, then my blade sank in easily.
A startled expression broke across his face, followed quickly by horror.
He knew he was going to die.
I didn’t stop to watch the life drain out of him. I turned to dispatch Kyle, savoring the look of terror in his eyes as he watched his comrades bleed out on the floor.
I slit his throat before he could run — quick, efficient, but bloody.
