I couldn’t speak, vomit pouring out of me, the stink of death overwhelming.
“I loved you,” I heard Silvanus say. “I loved you so much.”
He was talking about Aidan, right?
Aidan.
My Aidan.
Murderous, vindictive Aidan.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
SILVANUS
Grief clouded my judgment in the tower that day.
As much as I hated Aidan for killing Lucius, he’d also stolen my heart. He completed me, showed me love. A man of pure gold from his skin to his hair, those eyes incredibly molten.
Yes, he could’ve killed us all if it wasn’t for me being marked to take the Heart of All. But I loved him. I wasn’t ready to lose him. I wanted to redeem him, to run away with him and make this nightmare go away.
What a fool.
I opted for mercy, stopping the others from hurting him with that sword. I took my hand off it as we rushed, breaking the momentum.
“Can’t we talk this through?”
A stab of extreme grief hit me. Unseen, swaddled in secrets the song couldn’t reveal.
Betrayal…
More betrayal…
Curse it! Why couldn’t it reveal itself?
Aidan laughed, lifting the sword with telekinesis and cut them all down in quick succession. Not me. I’d fallen over, clutching the Heart of All—safe because when a monarch marked a vampire to inherit the responsibility, it moved to the marked one safely.
As Lucius had done to me.
Before Caer met the end of the blade, she cursed him. He flew back as the sword buried into her guts, landing in that recess. Chains and runes sealed him inside, but not before he launched his own curse back at her.
“I grant myself the means to return!” he bellowed. “I will drown your minds in untruths! I will break your memories!” He howled with cruel laughter.
“And I attach myself to those means!” Caer cried. “I infect your schemes in however this curse decides to let things unfold!”
“Only if I am free from this place!” he fired back.
Her body crumbled seconds later, the blade ending her before she could return another curse.
The mask covered Aidan’s face, silencing him, and the door slammed shut.
A ripple of power passed over the room, throwing me out of the window, sending me hurtling through the storm.
Paris’s song ended, the force of these revelations bringing me to my knees.
We’d been deceived by Aidan. Me, the world, and the elf vomiting beside me.
Because of me. Because of my ridiculous attempt at mercy.
