But right now, I need her. We all do.
Fire kisses up my throat, narrowing into a soul-deep scream. The castle trembles—pebbles and towers collapsing in on themselves as I rain chaos and destruction down upon us. I lose myself in the peace of death, purging my buried pain, and the world around me disintegrates.
It’s uncontrollable. I can’t rein it in. It’s going to consume me.
Someone is shaking me. Calling a name I forgot I had.
I blink, jarred out of my trance and spit back into my surroundings.
It is deadly quiet.
The Stryga are gone.
I look from Jace, clutching my arms with wide eyes, to Zadyn, now in his fae form, crouched over something.
Someone.
The world shifts into slow motion as I approach him, pulling his shoulder back to let me through.
The king is dead.
PART II: DEVIL’S BARGAINS
32
SERENA
Inever thought of grief as a privilege. But it turns out bereavement is a luxury only afforded when you’re not under siege.
The council room is eerily quiet.
I stare blankly out the shattered stained-glass window, trying to make sense of the last two hours.
Everything happened so fast.
I can’t scrub the image from my mind no matter how hard I try. Every time I blink, I see Derek’s brown eyes, the eyes of my father, staring up into the sky, frozen and unseeing.
An old wound opened up in that moment. One I’d almost forgotten about until now. Until once again, Death came to collect her due.
I wanted to know him. I wanted to be close to him. But we didn’t have enough time. We never do.
“Lady Serena.”
My eyes slide to Lord Gronwen, Master of Coin and one of Derek’s closest advisors. He stands across from me, fingers steepled over the table, blue-black hair streaming past his shoulders.
“I’m sorry, what?”
He sighs through his nose. “How did this happen?”
It’s Zadyn who answers for me. “Right before Serena decimated them, one of the Stryga lunged for Jace while his back was turned. Derek threw himself between them.”
Jace sits in the seat designated for the Hand of the King, to the right of Derek’s seat.
But he isn’t there. He never will be again.
Jace’s face is vacant as he stares into the gouges in the wooden table and the freshly dried bloodstains across its surface. He hasn’t said a word since it happened. I know the guilt is eating him up inside.
Gronwen runs a hand over his face, looking exhausted. The High Priest and Lord Conwell, Derek’s Head of Records, exchange a grave look.
