“Keep each other safe.”
Then I turned fast, like I could outrun the weight of it all before it crushed me, and went to find Ko to make sure he hadn’t gone too far.
Because that was what the biggest billy goat gruff did.
He kept them alive. Carried the weight. Broke before they did.
And stood as the shield with a single, unshakable promise: “Nothing touches you while I’m still breathing.”
#
Koa
The water burned hot against my skin. Almost scalding. I didn’t turn it down.
Blood sluiced off my knuckles in thin, rust-colored streams, curling down the drain like it couldn’t get away fast enough. My hands ached. Bone-deep. Maybe even broken. I couldn’t tell anymore.
Didn’t matter. I deserved worse.
She’d almost gotten our beloved.
Eluned had almost killed Seri.
And we hadn’t been here to stop it.
Ourbelovedhad had todefend herselfwith a fuckingbranchbecause her fucking husbandsweren’t fucking there!
I scrubbed harder to get Eluned’s stink off me, a mix of blood and rot and Dark magic, but it clung. Giving up, I braced my hands against the sink edge, head dropping.
Eluned had been begging at the end. Clawing at me, hurting my ears with her high-pitched keening. I’d kept going without a shred of remorse, without a moment of hesitation. Partly because she deserved it, and partly because we weren’t there when our beloved needed us.
Lost in my thoughts, I didn’t hear the door open. I only felt it when the air pressure dropped like a stone. A deep cold sank into the walls, thick and heavy like graveyard fog, and the hairs on my nape stood up.
I turned my head and spotted Casimir just inside the door, where he hovered for a second. Then he moved at dhampir speed, his gaze fixed on my hands. Slowly, almost absently, he turned them over. Examined the damage. Feeling if anything was broken. Ignoring the blood dripping on the floor.
A chill scraped down my spine.
“Cas?”
He didn’t answer. Didn’t meet my eyes. He just kept studying my hands, like he was reading something in the torn skin and cracked knuckles that I couldn’t see. Like something inside him was trying to sift through the aftermath.
Slowly, the pit of my stomach started to turn.
I didn’t know why I asked it, maybe instinct, but my mouth moved before my brain could stop it.
“Zane?”
And Casimir’s head jerked up. When his gaze locked on mine, my pulse stuttered.
Noctem maledicta.
His eyes weren’t green anymore. They were black. Utterly, abyssally black. No pupil. No iris.Nothing. Like something vast and void-like was staring out from behind his face. Something that didn’t understand the concept of mercy.
And for one gut-wrenching moment, Ifeltit.
What he held back.
Monstrous. Ancient. Wrong.
