Up close, the horror is worse.
His flesh runs like heated candle wax, bone and muscle visible beneath skin that can't decide if it wants to hold together or flee. The three heads snap and writhe independently—the one with no eyes weeping tears of black ichor, the one with no ears howling silently against agony it can't escape, the sewn mouthstraining so hard against its stitches that blood wells around each thread.
But it's hiseyes—the ones that can still see—that break something in me.
Red and molten and filled with pain so profound it transcends species, those eyes find mine with recognition that shouldn't be possible. He sees me. Even in my spectral form, even as his body falls apart around him, Damienseesme.
And I see him.
Not the monster.
Or the pureblood prince who terrorized others to maintain his cover.
Not even the hellhound Elena crafted from his suffering.
I see the truth beneath all those masks—a man who knew too much, loved too secretly, and sacrificed everything to give someone else a chance to survive.
He's fighting so hard.
The realization makes me ache in ways I don't expect. His vampire side—the crimson burning through one set of eyes—wars against the transformation, blood magic desperately trying to purge the corruption that Elena's talisman introduced. But vampire healing can't compete with the plague that's killing him from within.
Can't reverse magic that was designed specifically to unmake.
He falls.
Not dramatically, not with the grace that once defined his every movement, butcrumples—legs giving out as the poison reaches his joints. His massive form crashes to the platform with impact that shakes the frozen air, and then he's there, dying at my feet, and I don't know what to do because I'm a ghost and I can'thelp?—
No.
The thought arrives with force that surprises me.
I am Gwenievere Hawthorne.
The heir to the Infernal Academy.
The woman who survived trials that should have killed me, who bonded with men who should have been enemies, who carries the heart that protected the most powerful artifact in existence.
I am not helpless.
I drop to my knees before the hellhound, spectral form passing through the platform's surface until I float at eye level with Damien's collapsing face. My hands reach for him—instinct overriding logic—and Icommandmy magic to work.
The fire responds.
Not the external flames of the Infernal Realm, but something deeper—the crown that manifests above my head when I access my true heritage, the dragon fire Mortimer's bond has granted me access to, the burning determination that refuses to let death win without a fight.
My hands begin to glow.
The luminescence isn't vampire red or dragon gold but something between—a hybrid light that shifts through colors as it struggles to take form. I grit my teeth against the strain, forcing my will into shape, demanding that my spectral existence becomerealenough to touch.
Come on. Come on. COME ON.
My fingers solidify.
Not fully, still translucent, still more light than flesh, but enough to grip the hellhound's massive head, forcing his molten gaze to meet mine as I cup what remains of his jaw in my glowing hands.
The contact hits like lightning.
My eyes roll back, pupils dilating as power surges through the connection.
