I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t move.
The hilt of the dagger protruded from Horace’s head. His body was suspended, a fierce expression still on his features.
He hadn’t even seen it coming. Had no time to prepare.
It happened faster than he could draw his next breath.
Bile crept up my throat, my body realizing the truth before my mind.
He couldn’t be dead. It was a trick. My loyal guard, my surly friend…he would be fine. I couldhealhim.
I drew in a sharp breath.Yes, I could heal him.
My limbs sprang into action, my feet carrying me across the floor as if I was gliding on air. The buzzing in my ears drowned out the noise of the room; I distantly saw Rissa and Lark’s silent screams, their faces red and contorted. I saw Gayl thrust his arm toward me, but whatever spell he cast, I felt nothing.
I feltnothing.
All I knew was I had to get to Horace.
I could save him.
Blood poured from his eye, thick and viscous. It covered hischeek, his chin, his neck, pooling on the ground where he lay. His other eye was glassy, unseeing.
I knelt at his side.
My blood thundered in my veins like a drum, harder and faster the closer it got to the surface of the cut in my hand. Begging to be freed.
In the back of my mind, Leo’s voice whispered, “It will have a price, sweetheart.”
I nudged the warning away. It was just an injury. Just a simple healing. There may be a small price, but I could pay it. Nobody else would have to get hurt.
“He’s not injured, Rose. He’s dead. You can’t heal that.”
No—no, he wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be dead. I couldn’t lose someone else, not again, not after everything?—
“You have to let him go. Don’t be likehim—don’t do something you can’t come back from. Do you remember what happened when Gayl brought back the dead?”
I choked on a sob, my hands clenching at my side. Yes, I remembered—if Gayl hadn’t cast that fateful spell, I wouldn’t have Leo. Wasn’t that worth it?
I took in Horace’s body, the color already draining from his face, the blood flow already beginning to cease. I blinked back against the wave of denial, against the sorrow that sunk its teeth into me and dragged me under the surface.
He was dead.
A shadow approached my side.
“He was your friend, Rose, and for that I am sorry. But Horace?—”
I stood, catching Gayl’s injured wrist in my hand. He was so close I could see every wrinkle in his skin, every vein in his eyes. “Don’t you dare say his name,” I hissed, my words like venom as they slithered between us.
“Rose, move!” Lark shouted behind me. Instinctively, I dropped his arm and ducked, right as a long, feline form launched itself overmy head and onto Gayl’s body. Sharp shards of shadows followed in the fox’s wake.
I wanted to scream, to tell them to stop, that Gayl would kill them in a heartbeat—but the two women had converged. Snarls echoed in the chamber as claws dug into Gayl’s flesh.
His guards lunged into action, weapons drawn and aimed at their backs. A shield charm was on the tip of my tongue when seconds later, all four guards, Rissa, Lark, and I were blasted off our feet. A sound like a clap of thunder bounced from wall to wall. My head pounded as I hit the stone and crumpled to the floor.
Gayl stood, fury in his eyes and blood dripping from claw marks on his cheeks and neck. His lips moved and the flesh began to knit itself together, the blood disappearing back into his body.
“For that,” he panted, glaring at Rissa and Lark, “you will die.”
