I called it down from the stars, and it answered. My skin began to shimmer silver.
“What are you?—”
Power burst from my hands in a violent surge of color. Twilight auroras exploded outward, throwing Edric off me.
His body seized. Limbs jerked, eyes rolling white. A guttural sound tore from his throat as he went slack. Alive—regrettably, but unconscious.
The silence afterward rang in my ears. My heart slammed wild and uneven. I stared at the sleeping king, my hands shaking so violently they blurred. My knees buckled, and I fell to the floor.
Sobs came in raw, heaving waves. I clutched at my sternum, at the hollow where the tether had once lived. I reached for it anyway, half-mad, desperate. Needing one spark. One flicker.
Nothing.
No warmth.
No pull.
I do not know how long I cried. Time had no shape. The cold stone floor seeped into my nightgown. Thoughts circled like carrion birds, dropping broken fragments into my mind:
He will kill Mav.
He will kill them all.
You gave him the excuse. You gave him the reason.
The spiral threatened to drag me under. I shut my eyes. My refusal could very well accelerate their deaths. Edric could take the rejection out on them in the form of torture.
Twilight whispered along my skin.
I knew what must be done.
My fingers shook as I pressed them to my temple. I built the sequence slowly. I imagined what Edric craved. His desire mademanifest. Tonight, as he wished it to be. I crafted it to be believable as memory.
My skin crawled with the horror of what I had created.
As I pulled my fingers from my temple, the silver threads of the fabrication stuck to my fingertips. I crossed to his unconscious form. Bile burned my throat as I laid my hand on his head, transferring the sequence into his mind.
Edric sighed and smiled in his sleep.
Wiping my face with the heel of my hand, I trudged to the washroom. I rinsed his blood from my mouth and splashed water over my face. Avoiding his place on the floor as I walked, I curled into the farthest corner of the bed.
Sleep did not grant me the mercy of its reprieve. I lay breathing through the pain, the grief, and the gaping hollow where Mav used to be, waiting for a dawn I was not sure I wanted to see.
38
MAV
They dragged me from her. I fought like a feral madman: teeth bared, elbows slamming into ribs, feet kicking for purchase. I didn’t care that there were six of them. All I knew was that I had to get back to her. Quinn’s pleading voice carried to the landing.
And then I heard it.
A sharp impact.
A sound I’ll never forget.
A crack, a gasp, and then—nothing.
Panic surged through my bloodstream. “Quinn!” I bellowed.
