Green flames.
Green bones.
Green death.
Flung aside by the booming heat that followed, I sailed through the night. Weightless, until I crashed in a tangled heap of limbs that were mine and his, my head struck the uneven cobbles hard enough that, for a moment, I saw nothing at all.Feltnothing.
Not the impact. Not the emotions of a horde, nor the oppressive force of Asher’s unshakable will.
Blessed nothingness.
Dazed but still conscious, I couldn’t bring myself to react beyond a blink at the electric shock of life yielding to death as the woman was simply… obliterated in the flames. A shuddering gasp whispered over my lips as the last of her sour dregs vanished into the void, leaving me to untangle myself from her energy. Disoriented. Bleeding freely into the dirt, where I lay limp beneath Asher’s dead weight.
His bulk pressed me into the cobbles, with no awareness that he was crushing me beneath him.
Shallow breath ruffling the fine hairs on my nape was the only indication that he was merely unconscious. Not dead.
I was…free.
Just for a moment. Just long enough to be reminded what it felt like, before he woke and reeled me back in.
There wasn’t time to luxuriate in it. Not enough of anything to enjoy my moment, for I was too drained. Too deplete and worn through. I hadn’t even the strength to heft him off me and take a full, luxurious breath.
Boots crunched somewhere off to my left.
Boots attached to the vibrant signature of an unbound Caledonian elite.
And I knew, without bothering to twist my head, just who it was who’d fired that deadly shot. Who’d killed an unarmed, injured woman when he’d meant to killme.
Dez.
He’d followed us from the podium, infected with a poisonous rage not quite his own.
I looked. Chest rising and falling in an uneven shudder as my head fell to the side, trapped beneath Asher’s dead weight.
Pinned…
… but not quite helpless.
Watching through a blur as something hot tracked through the grime on my cheeks. Blood or tears or sweat, I couldn’t begin to offer a guess, because a conduit couldn’t care about such insignificant details.
“I told you she’d pay, Rawlings,” Dez said, a horrible smirk crinkling one corner of his lips as he crunched over hideous things. “She’s got to answer for what she done. What she knows.”
Violence erupted from the centre of my very being. A wordless denial, it was the very definition of survival. Pure and primal, I ensnared Marco with a barbed lash, for it was my turn to brandish a monster on a leash.
As if he were an ill-fitting cloak, I made space for myself inside Marco’s heart. Shoved aside anything that wasn’t pure, cold vengeance, and was with him when he staggered to his feet with a guttural roar. Felt every intimate facet of his temper as it was uncorked. Full of adrenaline and rage, the soldier scrambled up. Tripping only once, before he fell on Dez from behind.
A maelstrom of heavy fists fell. Ribs, kidneys, jaw, and cheeks—Marco was everywhere all at once. His weapon forgotten where it had been holstered at his hip.
I felt the male satisfaction and the hurt. The victory and the lancing crunch of bones buckling under the assault.
Everything.
Joy.
Rage.
Fear. Pain.
