“Claire! Stop!” Tansy gasped. “You’re hurting him!”
“If I don’t do something, he’s going to die!”
Weakly, she nodded. I called to the demonic power that lived inside me, and willed the horn to take the sickness from him, to drink it down and leave him whole. To obey me as it had with the spell on the door to these tunnels.
I was a powerful Dark Witch, and I’d fed him what it wanted. My pleasure. Bastien’s blood. I’d given it more than enough tonight.
With my eyes closed, I reached for the disease crawling through his veins and tried to draw it out. I remembered the first time I met him at my prospective consort presentation. And when he’ddisrobedbeside Tansy. I’d been so embarrassed and angry at Bastien for sending me someone like him. But…Tansy had spoken up for him, and her love for this man, a Dark Witch that I would’ve otherwise written off as evil, had opened my heart to him.
And I was the better for it. This man, who was as funny as he was kind, came to the Lawless Lands for me. The magick flared in my chest, and I leaned into it. Drawing on the need to fix this. To save him.
“Keep going!”Tansy urged me on. “It’s working!”
I opened my eyes and saw the black rot retreating inward toward the horn, like spilled black ink being sucked back into the pot. Reversing time. Devlinn locked eyes with Tansy and reached for her cheek with a quivering hand. A smile formed on his lips. “You are beautiful,” he said weakly.
“And you’ve never been more handsome,” Tansy told him, holding his hand tight against her cheek. He choked out a sound that might’ve been a laugh.
Tears pricked in my eyes, and I didn’t stop them from coming as I refocused on what I was doing. Pulling the disease from him. But just like the candles that I’d tried to light, I felt the power slipping from inside of me. And when it did, the rot spread with terrifying speed, blooming across his chest, down his ribs, into places I could no longer reach.
“No! No! No!” Tansy sobbed.
Bastien crouched beside me and placed his hands on the horn too, offering whatever support he could. Whatever power he had. But it wasn’t enough. It slowed the rot just long enough for Devlinn to say one last thing.
“Find peace, my love.”
A line of black liquid trailed from between his pale lips, and I knew it was over. I stared at him, shaking, unable to believe this was real.
“You did everything you could,” Bastien said gently, setting a hand on my shoulder.
I did everything I knew how to do, and yet, it still wasn’t enough. This was all my fault. If I had just let Tyson grab the girl instead of trying to change her mind, Devlinn would be alive.
This horn, this magick, had failed me.
I ripped it from Devlinn’s chest and hurled it across the cavern with everything I had. It struck the stone wall with asharp, ringing crack, the sound echoing again and again like a broken bell, but it bounced off the wall and skidded back to me, inches from my hand, as if to say I wasn’t getting rid of it that easily.
Chapter 23
La Bête
BASTIEN
Ihad no idea what game Gorrath was playing. Did he truly believe that if he collected enough blood from me—enough pain, enough offerings—that he could free himself from his prison in the Underworld? But there was no time to consider what this all meant or to mourn the death of a good man. Because from the depths of the cavern, I heard sounds. Footsteps fast approaching. Heavy breaths. And the low rumble of a growl.
Claws tapped lazily against the inside of my ribs.“Your wife. Your child. They need protection. They don’t need you. They need me.”
The ruthless, angry thing inside me. The one that had torn through witches in that graveyard and felt nothing but relief afterward. He wanted out. I had an army to command, and thatthingdidn’t lead. I swallowed it like poison.
“Lord Tyson,” I said, already drawing steel. My voice came out in the tone of a commander who did not have time to grieve the dead. “Give the prisoner to a guard. I needyou with me.”
Orders were easier than feelings. And if I stayed cold and detached, I could keep that thing inside me at bay. I’d fought in the Lawless Lands countless times. This was no different.
Claire gave me a murderous look from where she sat on the ground beside Tansy, who was crying uncontrollably. “She’s just a scared girl. She didn’t want to do it.” She turned to Tansy. “I know she didn’t mean to do this.”
“But she did,” Tansy sobbed. “She did.”
Devlinn’s body lay between them, and I forced myself not to look.
Irons were clamped around the girl’s wrists with a clank and a snap. Her wand was taken, tossed aside like a broken toy. She didn’t fight. Just stared through us with hollow eyes.
