“We will end you,” Chaos said, raising a hand, his fingers morphing into jagged claws. “We will end you right now.”
“Chaos, wait!” Cinder shouted, lunging forward, but I caught her arm, holding her back.
“Stay out of this, Cinder.” My voice sounded harder than I intended, my rage mirroring that of my brothers—a deep, thrumming desire for vengeance that had been denied for too long. “This is demon business.”
“It’s murder,” Scorsha said, her voice shrill.
“It is justice.” Mayhem grabbed Patrice by the arm, jerking her into the center of the room. She dropped her bag, bottles of potions clattering across the floor. “We rotted in darkness for four hundred years because of your ancestor’s spite, and you dare to walk among us, pretending to be a friend?”
“I am a friend!” Patrice sobbed, falling to her knees as Chaos loomed over her. “Please, you have to listen. I gave the amulet shard to Chrys, but I didn’t know all this would happen.”
“You did this?” Cinder’s voice was barely a whisper. “You’re the reason our friends are dead?”
Patrice looked up, trembling under the weight of three demons ready to tear her limb from limb, her face streaked with tears and mucus. “My great-great-grandmother broke the amulet to keep anyone from using it, and each line of the family kept a piece of it. It was passed down to the eldest daughter for generations as a safeguard. But I hated it. I hated the stories of what Isabel did to you. I wanted to break the curse, not usher it in. You have to believe me.”
“So you gave a dark artifact to a mentally unstable witch?” Chaos sneered, his talons growing, sharpening. “You drove her mad. You killed her.”
“I didn’t know that would happen,” Patrice wailed. “I thought if she could summon you, I could talk to you. I could beg for your forgiveness and give you the shard. I thought it would fix everything. I didn’t know it would corrupt her mind. I didn’t know she would try to kill everyone.”
“Your ignorance cost lives,” Mayhem hissed, his hand tightening on her shoulder. “And it nearly cost Ember hers.”
“I know.” Patrice hung her head, sobbing into her hands. “I know, and I am so sorry. I deserve whatever’s coming. If you have to kill me to end the curse, do it. Save Ash and the coven. Save Salem.”
Chaos raised his clawed hand, his eyes nearly void of humanity. Mayhem’s violet flames licked up his arm, ready to incinerate her where she kneeled. They were lost to the darkness of their past, to the trauma of the prison. They saw only Isabel. They saw only the enemy.
And for a moment, looking at the woman whose bloodline had tormented us, I wanted to let them do it.
But then I looked at Cinder.
She no longer struggled against my grip. Instead, she watched me, her eyes wide, filled with fear—not for Patrice, but for me. She was waiting to see who I was. With my powers returned, was I the Prince of Hell, the sower of strife? Or was I the man who had held her in the waterfall and promised to be everything she would ever need?
She has made me a better man. The words I’d spoken to Mayhem only minutes ago echoed in my mind. If we killed Patrice now, we’d be no better than the monsters Isabel made us out to be. The monsters our witches first thought we were.
I released Cinder and stepped forward, moving faster than thought. Just as Chaos brought his hand down to strike, I caught his wrist.
The impact sent a shockwave through the room, rattling the windows. Chaos snarled, turning his livid gaze on me. “Let go, brother. She is the source.”
“She is a symptom,” I said, holding his gaze. “Isabel is dead. Her firstborn is dead. This woman is not her.”
“She carries the blood.” Mayhem raised his fiery fist.
“And we carry the trauma.” I shoved Chaos back and turned to face Mayhem. “Look at her. She is on her knees. She is begging for death to atone for sins she did not commit. Does that look like Isabel to you?”
Mayhem hesitated, the fire in his eyes flickering. He looked down at Patrice cowering, waiting for the end.
“We are free.” I dropped my voice to a harsh whisper. “We are standing in the mortal realm, reunited with our power, in the presence of our soulmates. Killing this witch will not give us back the years we lost. It will only stain our new lives with blood we do not need to spill.”
Cinder clutched my biceps, resting her hand on my shoulder and increasing my resolve.
“We end Isabel’s power over us today,” I said. “We end it by saving the witch on the floor…” I pointed to Ash. “Not by slaughtering the one on her knees.”
Chaos stared at me for a long beat, the tension in the room thick enough to choke on. Finally, he looked at Ash, who moaned softly on the rug, the madness still clouding her mind.
“You have become soft, Discord,” Chaos muttered, though the murderous light had faded from his eyes.
“No,” I corrected him, straightening my spine. “I have simply learned the difference between an enemy and a casualty.”
I offered a hand to Patrice, and she flinched as if it were a snake. She looked at Ember’s unreadable expression, then at Scorsha, and finally at Cinder. My witch nodded, and Patrice reached out, trembling, and slowly took my hand, allowing me to pull her to her feet.
