“Enough!” He snatched her out of mid vamp-speed as if she were a fly he’d gotten tired of missing with his swatter.
Suddenly, the stake wasn’t in her hand.
It was in his, and it was pressed to her chest.
“No!” Echo heard Elijah yell from the entrance to the alley.
William pierced her flesh, and Echo was shocked to see his eyes glisten.
“Tears for me, William?” She gasped, hoping her fight was not for nothing. That she’d bought Elijah and her friends the time they needed to kill her adoptive father.
William’s eyes shone ever more brightly against his silver irises. “Whatever you might think of me, you are my daughter and I love you.”
“Funny”—Echo winced as the stake moved deeper into her chest—“way of sh-showing it.”
Just as she prepared to become dust on the wind, Elijah and Odette her last thoughts, a sudden blinding golden light forced her to slam her eyes closed in death.
Was this how it ended?
So, it was true.
When you died … there was only light.
31
Elijah was blindedby golden white light.
A light that blasted out of every inch of him as he roared in desperate grief at the sight of William pushing the wooden stake into Echo’s chest.
When Echo and William had fallen from the window, the rest of them had attempted to follow suit, only to realize William had somehow trapped them inside it with a spell. Fionn was taking too long to counterspell it, so Niamh and Rose had taken them all one by one by using the gift totravel. Elijah had never deliberately attemptedtravelingbefore. The first and only time he’d done it, he hadn’t realized he’d done it. Frustrated with his own inability to break the spell, Fionn had finally gripped a hold of Elijah andtraveledfor them both.
Only to appear at the end of the alley with the others to witness the worst thing Elijah had ever seen in his life.
His mate about to die.
Elijah had become nothing but energy and rage, grasping for something within himself to end William before he killed Echo.
The light blasted out of him in answer.
His eyes wet with tears, every inch of Elijah shook as the light faded and the world returned to him again.
Before him, Echo stood gaping down at the pile of ash at her feet.
William.
Dead.
She turned to Elijah who was vaguely aware of his companions lowering their arms from their faces against the blare of sunlight he’d unleashed. But his mate had all of his attention.
Alive, he thought, sucking in a ragged breath.
A breath that caught when his wide-eyed Echo flinched and looked down at her chest.
The stake protruded from it, and she brought her hands up hesitantly.
“Don’t!” Fionn called out from his side, marching toward Echo. “That stake is most likely centimeters from piercing your heart.”
Elijah hurried after the large fae, pulse throbbing in his ears. Terror gripped him, but he tried to hide it for Echo’s sake. “What do we do?”
