White-hot, it refused to part with her skin, degloving the finger as I tore it off the bone. Exposing gore-spattered muscle and tendons to air toxic with screams and death.
Choking on the gummy vapor, I retched, trying to peel the taste of charred general off the back of my tongue. Hands shaking, fingertips melting, I crumbled the blackened smoking flesh from the ring, and slipped it onto my middle finger.
Too late.
Though unimaginable power exploded behind my eyes, I was too late. Where the High Priestess had been, there was nothing but a bone-chilling vacuum. Absent everything but a tiny, flickering spark of life clinging to her shell.
“No!” I screamed, hurling everything I had into the abyss, trying to bring her back. To ignite what remained of the Goddess’ chosen and force her to stay. Tethering her to life with vines of purest ki, I tied her to me.
Eyes gone almost white opened with a smile, and she cupped my cheek with her undamaged hand. “Precious, Mila. My wild rogue. There’s so much you don’t know. So much I wish I could—” she coughed, blood misting the dense air between us. Spattering my cheeks. “I trust you to know this isn’t the answer for the rest. Free them… The Priestesses… from a life… half-lived…”
I shook my head, latching on to every shredded fragment of her being I could reach, fighting Death itself with the power of three.
“Stop.” Brushing my efforts aside as if they were nothing, she smiled—and clipped my ethereal vines. Returning all the ki she’d collected to the ring, she said, “For Tritan,” and exhaled her last.
“Your Grace…” I shook her, bones threatening to pop through my knuckles as her head lolled. “No!No!”Breaking apart from the inside out, I sobbed, latching on to her spirit as it faded away.
Chaos, all around me. Masculine voices ringing in my ears. “Get off her, you vile little witch!” Strong arms wrenched the corpse from my grip. Held a blade to the vulnerable pulse hammering away at the base of my throat, but I did not fight. If I could feed her just alittlemore…
“Miss Tannovic!” Bruising fingers gnawed at my bicep, tearing me between two unmovable forces. “She didn’t do this, Reese! Unhand my Priestess, or so help me—” His voice faded, swallowed by the Void.
A heavy thud echoed in my ears, the sound of flesh striking flesh, and I was thrown to the side. Limp beside the pool of stinking plasma that had eaten a monster. Watching as General Tilcot’s murky, dark eyes popped, spewing their boiling innards as the last pieces of his skull slipped beneath the surface. Swallowed by plasma meant for me andmine.
“Mila!” A warm hand touched my cheek. The scent a familiar tickle at the back of my brain.
The captain. Asher. My bonded Elite. “You have to let her go,” he whispered, cradling my face in his palm. “There’s nothing you can do.”
I whined, cold and dead in the middle.
“Let her go, Mila. She’s taking you with her. Taking us both.”
“I… I don’t care…” And I didn’t. The cold was spreading.
“Your fight isn’t over,” he murmured, ensnaring me with that inky, bottomless gaze. “Her death frees us. Don’t take that from her.”
Freedus?She’d takenmyrelease! Left me holding the power of three and the fate of our people. Choking on cruel anguish, I cried out, wishing I could tear my chest open and expose my tainted soul to the light. Wishing I could join her, even as I let my spirit touch hers in a silent farewell.
When the last anchor broke, it was becauseIallowed it. Because I slipped my hand into my pocket and worked the ring off my finger, allowing her broken spirit to slip into the Void. It happened so quickly and irrevocably that for a moment, I wasn’t sure if she’d ever really existed. “She’s gone.”
Asher brushed the hair back from my tear-stained face. “I know.”
“All that power,” I whispered, beginning to shake from somewhere deep within. Hardly aware of my own ingrained deception, I followed an instinct that demanded I keep this tiny piece of Milithia’s chosen to myself. “Gone.”
Humming, Asher didn’t seem to notice. Didn’t move to take his ring, in favor of running his thumb from cheek to ear. Whisking away my tears.
When he lifted me—sobbing into his heat, legs dangling over his forearm—none moved to block him, for he was right. Sashahadfreed us. Obliterated all obstacles, suspicion, and threats aimed in our direction so thatwemight live. In their eyes, I was just another Triloth of moderate potential, grieving with all the rest.
And Asher was just another Elite trying to soothe an ache felt through the Blood, each and all.
Exonerated by her sacrifice.
Nonesaw the shadows glittering on Asher’s breast or moved to stop a rare and dangerous pair already half consumed by the Void.
None knew to look.
Chapter 14
“Shit!” Marco hip-checked the front door open, cheeks flushed, hair matted with sweat. “I cannotfuckingbelieve that just happened!”
