Excuse me? He had better not be shoving spiders in my mouth while I have no control over my body. Fucking nasty.
I can’t tell how much time has passed when pain cuts through the blurry haze of my half-existence. I find myself standing in thick snow, not far from the place Felix said he’d wait for us. Blinking in confusion, I realize Silas just shocked me with magic.
“Thanks for snapping me out of it,” I mutter, relieved to be mostly in my head again as I tug at the collar around my throat.
“It wasn’t a favor. I had to frighten your ear leeches away,” he says like that sentence makes perfect sense.
Crypt and Everett are standing beside us, having stopped the trek back to Felix to see what’s going on. Everett looks impatient as frost clings to his trench coat, but my attention immediately drops to the glass apothecary jar in Crypt’s hands.
Inside the jar is a softly beating heart surrounded by dark, swirling magic.
Oh, my gods.
That belongs inside my keeper.
I’m both disturbed and relieved. My own heart pounds as I stare at the mesmerizing, morbid display. “Fuck. Just…fuck.”
“Articulate as ever, Decimus,” Crypt drawls, but there’s an undertone of pain as his markings light up over and over.
“Maybe you shouldn’t be the one holding that,” I frown. “If you collapse again?—”
“I’d sooner rip out my own heart than let anything happen to this, and you know it.”
He turns to continue down the faint path left behind from our journey to the cabin, though so much snow has fallen that our tracks have practically been buried already. The rest of us follow, with a few ravens fluttering alone, cawing at us like spooky little reminders of my adorably spooky mate. A few minutes later, we find Felix sitting on a fallen log as he communicates with someone through the scrying brand on his arm.
As soon as he glimpses us, he stands and adjusts his thick coat, shivering in the cold. “Oh, good. I won’t have to tell Maven you’re all dead. You were gone long enough that I—” His gaze slips to the heart Crypt is carrying, and the breath whooshes out of him. He swallows audibly, eyes comically wide with something between fear and fascination. “So that’s what you really came here for. I mean, I heard he ripped it out of her, but I had no idea it was still?—”
“Is there even the tiniest possibility that a transportation spell would harm it?” Everett demands. He’s clearly done with the small talk and as desperate to get back to her as I am.
Felix seems unable to take his eyes off Maven’s heart as he frowns. “No, I highly doubt it. That looks like an extremely powerful preservation spell, so it should be fine. Plus, if Dagon brought it here, he probably transported with it multiple times.Rumor has it that a lot of necromancers fled Amadeus’s kingdom after the Upheaval because he began permanently killing off a lot of his court as he began his conquest of the mortal realm. Dagon must have?—”
“Dagon, Shmagon,” I cut in, gesturing at the glass jar. “We have a heart to return to the sexiest, deadliest demigoddess in the world, so chop chop, Grayscale.”
He glowers at me. “Kenzie once described you as a giant, friendly golden retriever with a bit of a temper. Personally, I understand why they keep a hulking beast like you in a collar.”
Jackass.
As the caster begins laying the transportation spell, I notice Silas take a hand out of his coat pocket. A fuckinghand.Based on the blackened fingertips, it’s probably Dagon’s, but still. What a creep.
“Si,” I begin like I’m talking to a toddler, holding out my hand. “Whatever the voices in your head are telling you, you don’t need to hoard a creepy-ass dismembered hand. Give it.”
He surprises me by giving me a very non-insane-Silas look, like he thinks I’m a moron. “Wedoneed it, because the jar is sealed with the same spell as is laid on that nifty collar around your neck. Without Dagon’s hand, it would be impossible our naught wecridhe dhi.”
It’s the weirdest thing. One second he sounds sharp as a tack, and the next I have no fucking idea what he’s trying to communicate as he smacks away creatures that don’t exist.
At long last, Felix is ready and we all move close until we’re in a huddle touching each other’s arms. A bright flash of green light turns my world inside out before suddenly, we’re standing just outside the ancient servants’ entrance into Everbound Castle.
The trouble is, this entrance is no longer being ignored. I realize we just transported into the middle of dozens of humans, legacies, and Nether humans who are literally camping outsidethe stronghold. Our unexpected entrance makes them gasp and shout in excitement.
Before we have time to react, camera flashes begin blinding all five of us.
“Is it true that thetelumis divine?” someone shouts. “How did she come back from the dead?”
“Where is the demigoddess now?”
Someone else shoves forward, almost jostling Crypt, who quickly shields the jar with his ripped leather jacket to keep it out of the camera’s view as more flashes blind us.
“I need a miracle! Please, can I meet the daughter of the reaper? I’m begging you!”
