Now they’d make her pay.
The shots wouldn’t be to kill her. They’d lame her, as she had done with Sofie Renast, so they could drag her back to the Asteri to be ripped to shreds. Either by them or Pollux.
The shouts of the aerial legion drew closer from above. Was Pollux with them? Leading the swarm of angels to grab her?
Death lay behind her, at the end of the ledge. Swift, forgiving death.
The sort she’d be denied by the Asteri. If she could make it to the end of the cliff … it would be fast.
She’d fall, and her head would splatter on the rocks, and she’d likely feel very little. Perhaps a swift burst of pain, then nothing.
Even if she would never see what she had worked for, hoped for.
Lidia shoved that thought behind her. As she had always done.
Gedred knelt, rifle braced against a shoulder. Ready to fire.
So Lidia reached up to the silver torque around her neck. A flick of her fingers and it snapped free. “Since we’re repeating the past, I suppose I’ll tell you what Sofie told me that night.” She flung the torque, that hateful collar, into the dirt and smiled at Mordoc, at the dreadwolves. “Go to Hel.”
Then she broke into a run. Faster than she’d ever sprinted in this human form, hurtling toward the cliff edge. Two bullets landed at her heels, and she veered to the side, easily dodging the third.
She’d taught these dreadwolves everything they knew. She used it against them now.
“Shoot that bitch!” Mordoc screamed at his snipers.
Lidia’s life diluted into each step. Each pump of her arms. Bullets sprayed rock and shrapnel at her feet. Only a few more steps.
“END HER!” Mordoc roared.
But the cliff edge was there—and then she was over it.
Lidia sobbed as she leapt, as the open air embraced her. As the rocks and surf spread below.
For a heartbeat, she thought the water might be rising to meet her.
But that was her. Falling.
A gunshot cracked like a thunderhead breaking. Pain ruptured through her chest, bone shattering, red washing over her vision.
Lidia let out a choked, bloody laugh as she died.
36
Jesiba Roga moved Ithan from the bar pretty damn quickly after he’d said precisely who he wanted to raise from the dead. He found himself transported to an office—her office, apparently—crammed full of crates and boxes of what had to be relics for her business.
She shoved him into a chair in front of a massive black desk, took a seat on the other side in a tufted white velvet armchair, and ordered him to tell her everything.
Ithan did. He needed her help, and he knew he wouldn’t get it without honesty.
When he finished, Roga leaned back in her seat, the dim golden light from her desk lamp gilding her short platinum hair.
“Well, this wasn’t how I expected my evening to go,” the sorceress said, rubbing her groomed brows. On the built-in bookshelf behind her sat three glass terrariums filled with various small creatures. People she had turned into animals? For their sake, he hoped not.
But maybe she could turn him into a worm and step on him. That’d be a mercy.
Jesiba’s eyes gleamed, as if sensing his thoughts. But she said quietly, “So you want a necromancer to raise this Sigrid Fendyr.”
“It hasn’t been very long,” Ithan said. “Her body is probably still fresh enough that—”
“I don’t need a wolf to tell me the rules of necromancy.”
“Please,” Ithan rasped. “Look, I just … I fucked up.”
“Did you?” A cold, curious question.
He swallowed against the dryness in his throat as he nodded. “I was supposed to rescue her—and she was supposed to make the Fendyrs better, to save everyone.”
Roga crossed her arms. “From what?”
“From Sabine. From how fucking awful the wolves have become—”
“As far as I remember, the wolves were the ones who raced to Asphodel Meadows this spring.”
“Sabine refused to let us go.”
“Yet you defied her and went anyway. The others followed you.”
“I’m not here to debate wolf politics.”
“But this is politics. You raise Sigrid, and … what then? Have you thought that through?”
Ithan growled, “I need to fix it.”
“And you think a necromancer will solve that problem.”
He bared his teeth. “I know what you’re thinking—”
“You don’t even know what you’re thinking, Ithan Holstrom.”
“Don’t talk to me like—”