The knife fell from his fingers, his grip too weak to hold it. He swayed but forced himself to remain upright as blood poured from his chest, pooling on the floor.
And then he began the incantation. He spoke the syllables of his precious spell and watched his blood being drawn down the lines of the sigil toward the center. The hellfire ignited. His voice rose in volume though he couldn’t find the strength to raise it himself. The magic amplified it. It built higher and higher the longer he spoke. The winds began, gusting around the room as it was plunged into smoky darkness.
And then, at the very center of the sigil, the portal began to solidify.
It’s going to work.
The sacrifice was working. He could feel the magic pulsing out around him in great waves. It was powerful, so powerful that there was plenty more to spare. He could feel it drawing his soul from his body, using his sacrifice to push through the final barrier.
Somewhere far away, Lucifer’s seal weakened and then broke completely. Murmur felt it happen right before he lost the strength to remain upright, toppling to the ground.
Tired.He was suddenly so tired.
His consciousness slipped from his blood-soaked body.
And then, suddenly … he was living the death vision.
The very fate he’d fought so hard to prevent came regardless. He hadn’t altered his destiny after all. No matter what he did, he was always meant to die burning alive.
Flames surrounded him, scorching his essence. But they weren’t hellfire, as he’d always assumed. They were notphysical at all. They werewhite. Purifying. They seared to the core of his being, and he screamed in terrible agony.
And then … nothing. Blissful nothing.
He forgot who he was or what his mission was. He felt … release. He felt freedom. He felt—
Trapped.Suddenly, a powerful force was drawing him back, a dark tether sinking hooks into his essence and sucking him down, down …
Blackness surrounded him. Haunted cries echoed around him. He reached out to test the boundaries of his prison, but he had no form to utilize. He could sense the confinement, but it was as though he was paralyzed, trapped in a formless body encapsulated in ice.
All around, he heard screams.
BESTILL,MYBEATINGHEART
ASUDDEN TIGHTNESS IN HER CHEST WOKESUYIN JUSTafter dawn. She sat up in bed, trying to place the strange feeling. She hadn’t had any dreams that she remembered, but it wasn’t normal for her to wake up beset with … sadness? Grief? She wasn’t sure what it was.
More likely, it was the uneasiness about Murmur’s spell that she hadn’t been able to shake since he’d left last night.
Throwing her robe on, she padded into the kitchen on bare feet and flicked the kettle on for some herbal tea. She needed something calming. All night, the mark on her chest had burned, and it was still burning now. The skin stung from being cut, yes, but it was more than that.
The mark burned with dark magic.
She could feel its deadly power searing her from the inside, until it took all her self-control not to claw at her chest as if to scratch it off with her nails. What the hell had Murmur done to her? And why had she let him?
She stood by the window, watching the tree in the backyard swaying in the wind. But what she was really thinking about was the look on Murmur’s face while he’d carved that mark on her. He’d looked sickened, even paler than usual. Was it because he hadn’t liked harming her? He may have had a soft spot for her, but she wasn’t sure he was even capable of that kind of empathy.
Afterward, he’d avoided meeting her eyes, and he’d left in a hurry, barely bothering with a goodbye though it was potentially the last time they’d ever see each other. She’d been fighting panic at the thought, and he’d been unable to get out of there fast enough. And now she couldn’t help thinking …
He was hiding something.
She knew him well enough by now to sense he was lying. He’d never bothered lying to her before. Before she’d convinced him to open up about his plans, he’d simply ignored her questions or refused to answer them.
God, how could she have been so stupid? She’d let him sex her into complacency last night. And then she’d let him carve a sigil directly onto her skin, and she’d taken his word on how it worked instead of asking him to prove it first. She’d told him she trusted him, but that was taking it a little far.
He’d fucked the sense right out of her, evidently.
She dragged a hand down her face.
“If you fucked with me, Murmur,” she muttered to her silent kitchen, “I swear to god I’ll make you regret it.”
