“You are.”
The words were barely a whisper. Broken. Defeated.
The bitch. This was her idea of love?
“I didn’t hear you.” Alanna’s voice dripped with cruel satisfaction.
“You are.” Darius’ voice cracked. “You’re my queen. Just... stop. Please. I’m begging you. Stop.”
I sobbed—not from the pain, but from hearing him break. From knowing he’d surrendered everything to save me. No one had ever… I didn't want to finish the thought. No one had ever loved me enough to destroy themselves for me. And I didn't know whether that made me the luckiest person alive or the most wretched.
“There now,” Alanna purred. “That wasn’t so difficult, was it?”
She truly was an evil bitch.
“No, Darius.” Each word cost me. “Don’t give in.”
“Shut up.” Alanna hit me again, and lightning shot up my spine. Then she crouched down and dangled a black pocket watch in front of my face, its surface swirling with dark magic.
“Sistere.”
The word wrapped around me like a shroud. My eyelids grew impossibly heavy. The pain began to fade—not healing, just... disappearing. Like it was happening to someone else.
The world faded. Everything faded into blessed, black oblivion.
For now.
Chapter Thirty-One
Darius
For all the torture Alanna had ever done to me, this was the absolute worst.
Alice was still strapped over that metal barrel, her body broken and bleeding. Her blonde hair was tangled with her own blood, matted to her face and neck. She wasn’t moving. Wasn’t making a sound.
Alanna had used that damn spell again. The Unwatch.
The only solace—if you could call it that—was the spell had stopped Alice’s magic, and hopefully, it masked her pain too. Let her float somewhere far away from this nightmare.
But when she woke...
Grief wrapped around my throat like a fist.
I strained against my chains, stretching until the metal bit into my shredded wrists. My fingers brushed her arm—cold, too cold—and pain blazed behind my eyes. White-hot, splitting. Another memory clawing its way to the surface.
A face. Identical to mine. A laugh that matched my own. Two boys racing through a sunlit courtyard, their mother calling after them.
Armond.
My twin brother.
The name surfaced from somewhere deep and buried, dragging more fragments with it. He could heal. He had the gift—could mend broken bones, knit torn flesh, pull people back from the edge of death.
If only he was here. He could heal her. He could fix the damage Alanna had done. But he wasn’t. He was in another dimension, completely out of reach.
I was here. Chained. Powerless. With absolutely no way to help the woman I loved.
That thought nearly toppled me.
