He’s still warm.
“Please!” I scream, my chest heaving. “Please, no!”
I feel the absence of his arms around me like a gaping hole in my heart.
“Serena, he’s gone. I’m so sorry.” Jace tries to pry me away, and I resist, clinging to Zadyn with desperate need. “We didn’t know—this wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Slowly, I peel my face from Zadyn’s shoulder to peer up at Jace. “What wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“We only wanted to keep you safe here.” His eyes are filled with regret. With guilt.
“You...the two of you planned this?”
“I’m so—I’m so sorry?—”
Jace’s words are cut off as I slam him into the wall, my fingers wrapping around his throat.
“HOW COULD YOU DO THIS? YOU FUCKING RUINEDEVERYTHING!”
Utter rage devours me. Shadows spill out around me, serpentine tendrils lashing out to fill the tower. Fire bubbles beneath my skin, piercing through the barrier as my grip on Jace’s neck constricts. Before I can think to stop it, the room is on fire. Someone curses, and in my periphery, Kai douses the flames with his water. But my focus is on Jace.
“Serena, stop! You’re going to kill him.” Kai rushes toward us,latching onto my arm. I burn him without even meaning to. He breaks away gasping, but it’s Mar’s voice that edges me back to reason.
“Stop it. You don’t want to do this, and you know that.”
Jace, for all his strength and power, all his prowess as a warrior, is no match for the boiling rage inside of me. The rage and adrenaline fueling my magic. His hands grasp at mine, and I see in his eyes that he is afraid.
For the first time, he is afraid of me.
He fucking should be.
I rip my hands away as the shadows clear, slinking back toward me. Jace falls to the floor gasping, clutching at his neck. He reaches for my legs, but I step back, crashing to my knees beside Zadyn.
Even in death he is heartbreakingly beautiful. I don’t know how anyone could ignore it. HowIcould have ignored it for so long.
I look down at myself. At my clothes, at my hands wet with his blood. The hands of a monster herself.
I did this. I killed him. Ikilledmy familiar. My Zadyn.
Monster.
The room begins to spin. I can’t breathe. And what’s worse—I don’t want to.
Then Jace’s hands are pushing back my hair as he forces air down into my lungs. I try to resist, but he wins. Choiceless, I let his eyes ground me as he fills me with his gift.
Why couldn’t he just let me go? Let me suffocate? Without Zadyn, I’m dead anyway.
Then something occurs to me. Something Zadyn said to me a long time ago, when I first arrived in this world.
“I can bring him back,” I croak, pulling away from Jace. “He told me that some Blackbloods were necromancers. I can bring him back.”
I push the tears and snot from my face as my vision clears and my mind empties, focused solely on this one sliver of hope.
Mar sinks down beside me, laying a gentle hand on my shoulder.
“Serena,” she says softly, like she’s approaching a cornered animal. And I feel like one, ready to attack—to claw and fight andend. “Lifeand death magic is not easy. One mistake and he could come back…wrong.”
“I have to try. I can’t lose him. Iwon’t.”
