That buzz… it wasn’t panic but power.
You hold on too tight.
Then I would let go.
Skin prickling, poison hazing from me thicker than it had in Kaliban’s house, I straightened my back and reached out.
I gathered the magic vibrating against my skin, and purple mist rolled off me. There was only me and the power that consumed my entire focus.
Once I’d used up the nearby magic, I reached out with my mind. I grabbed the rocks and their low resonance, the land’s heady hum, the pine trees’ higher, more complex vibrations.
Sometimes the power tried to slither away, but I gritted my teeth and yanked it to me.
You are mine.
My poison formed a low mist over the ground, thickening with every second.
It seeped out of me like every angry word I’d only thought and not been able to say.
It deafened me like every scream I’d ever held in.
It rose and rose like a flood fed by every emotion I’d locked inside and poisoned myself with.
Except now, that poison spread out, filling the space at the base of the cliff.
Dimly, I registered that there was still a fight. Bastian. Alive. Only one half of him had been killed.
But I’d seen it. I’d felt it—a fissure in my fucking soul.
And I wasn’t about to let it happen again.
I clawed more power to me. The trees on the edge of the clearing turned brown, their branches wilting.
You are mine. You will see to it that I don’t die today—that he doesn’t die today.
He turned wide eyes upon me, a cut on his chin dripping, more blood on his cheek.
Around us, fae stumbled, their attack forgotten. They clawed at their shins, first, then the dark tendrils reached above their collars and up to their faces. They scratched at their cheeks and throats, like they could scrape my poison out.
Bodies arching, eyes screwing shut, the fae opened their mouths in cries I couldn’t hear over my own roaring rage.
One by one, they fell, disappearing in my poison’s haze.
Only Bastian and I remained standing.
He was alive. I’d saved him. My magic had saved him.
Lips parted, he regarded me. “That was… incredible.”
Needing to touch him to be sure he was really here and really all right, I started towards him, but my foot hit something. The mist swirled and revealed a body.
A woman, curled up, her face contorted in death.
It was the easiest thing I’d ever read.
Pain.
Terrible, terrible pain.
That I had caused.
I swallowed and edged around her, but there was another. A young man, this time, scratches down his cheeks from where he’d tried to rid himself of the creeping agony.
My rage evaporated.
All these people. I’d killed them.
How many? Twenty? Thirty? More?
Lives ended in agony.
I stared at my hands stained deep, dark purple, the poison still rolling off of them.
Stop, I told it. Stop.
But it didn’t… I couldn’t…
I’d let go and now I couldn’t control it. Panic filled my throat, pounded in my chest, painful and tight.
“Kat? Are you—？”
“Don’t.” I shook my head, stomach churning. “Don’t look at me. I’m a monster.”
He caught my shoulders like he wasn’t horrified by the death dripping from my fingers. He met my gaze and cupped my cheek, his warmth only dimly registering through the tingling magic. “You’re not a monster. You’re glorious.”
He was wrong.
I was out of control. I was a killer. A—
Something smacked into me and I stumbled forward into his arms. I tried to draw breath to speak, but… couldn’t.
Bastian paled, eyes wide, jaw slack.
Now he looked horrified.
Sluggish with grey blotches pressing at the edge of my vision, I followed his gaze down to my chest.
Blood. Steel in a familiar pointed shape.
An arrow head.
Then darkness.
63
Bastian
I killed a dozen of them before they managed to knock me out.
The whole thing was a tangle in my mind. Snatches of moments. More fighters pouring from the forest and down the cliff. A body sliced in two, slumping to the floor. A neck in my grip as I squeezed and squeezed and squeezed. A man clutching his thigh as his life seeped out.
And Kat’s blood on my hands.
Standing over her, I roared through it all, more animal than man. More broken than the bodies scattered at my feet.
The empty space in my chest echoed with the memory of a heartbeat.
I wouldn’t let them have her. I wouldn’t let them live.
But my will was not enough, and the universe had other ideas.
I woke with a terrible sickness roiling in my stomach. Someone thrust a bowl before me just in time for me to throw up until there was nothing but bile.
Gasping for breath, I gripped the edge of the bowl. My hands had been cleaned, but there was still something red caught under my nails.
Kat’s blood.
Was she…？ The arrow sticking out of her chest. She was. Had to be.
My eyes burned as the truth crept through every vein and nerve. It choked me.
I would kill them all. Even if this bowl was my only weapon, I would destroy every last one of them.
I shook, but not entirely with anger. Weakness seeped into my very bones, cold as iron. And my shadows…
No shadows.
I knew what I would find before my gaze trailed down to my wrists.
Iron manacles.
Unless it was alloyed and thus rendered safe, iron was technically illegal in Elfhame and hard to get hold of, but I owned a similar pair of cuffs. I hated using them, but it was the only way to deal with prisoners whose magic made them dangerous.
They’d been wrapped in felt so they wouldn’t burn my skin, but their poison still radiated into my body, killing my magic and slowly killing me.
Be smart, Bastian.
Survive a little longer so you can take revenge for her. Then join her.
One breath, two, I gathered myself and gradually became aware of something other than my own body and the horror of what had happened. Rows of beds. An armoured woman with silver hair stationed at the end of my bed. Gilded constellations clustered around a grand chandelier.
An infirmary inside a ballroom.
At my side, a man in a bloodied apron watched me with narrowed eyes before holding out his hand for the bowl.
So long as I had these manacles around my wrists, I wasn’t strong enough to kill anyone with the bowl, so I returned it.
He gave me water and a piece of hard cheese. There was no point in worrying about consuming poison—they already had the stuff wrapped around my wrists.
“Get up,” the guard bit out once I’d forced the food down.
Standing felt like lifting three Faoláns. My thighs didn’t burn like I’d worked them hard, they just strained as though they’d never had any strength to begin with.
I was a boy again. Weak and helpless.
I would not remain that way.
Following the guard and flanked by two more with a fourth behind, I pulled on the manacles, but in this state I had no chance of breaking them.
Kat was… She was gone. I’d been an idiot, thinking we had more time—all the time in the world.
But memento mori, like she’d said. And like a fool, I’d forgotten. Forgotten how delicate life could be, how short it was for humans. I thought we’d have more time.