I shove my dagger into his gut and rip it back out. I’m not fucking dead yet.
He stumbles back a few steps, his blade still buried in my side, but now I’m free. I leave his weapon inside me so that I don’t bleed out and force myself to stand, kicking my chair out of the way, gathering the energy to fight him. We’re both wounded. We both have magick. But I’m armed. He isn’t.
Before I can attack, Gavril lunges across the room, knocking me to the floor, sending my dagger flying into the fire. His blade burrows deeper into my side with the fall, and piercing, punishing, pain blazes through my body. He clasps his hands around my throat and squeezes as blood soaks through his tunic.
I try, but I can’t reach the hilt of his knife—my only defense. When I try a second time, Gavril lifts his knee and pins my right arm beneath his weight, then he fights me to pin the other.
The thinnest shred of hope forms as I hear Hel stomp toward the room, but Gavril hears her too. He throws up a hand, aiming it at the door, and though the knob jostles, Hel can’t enter.
My best friend pounds her fist on the door. “Finn? Raina?” When there’s no answer, she pounds harder. “Let me in.” And again, more pounding. “Fucking let me in!”
I buck against Gavril, kicking, each movement agony, and he uses magick to trap my legs, like two strong hands holding me down. He shakes his head, and with a cruel smile, grabs the hilt of his blade and pulls it from my body, the only thing keeping me from bleeding to death on this floor.
My pinned right hand lies in a pool of Finn’s warm blood. I can feel his skin against mine, the weak brush of his finger as tears pour from my eyes. I keep trying to focus, trying to save him, but I can feel him slipping.
Memories of him flood my mind. He shouldn’t have been here. He should’ve never come. I wish I would’ve made him stay in the valley.
Sobbing, I tell myself that this is the worst of it. Gavril will get up and wait until we stop breathing. I pray to the Ancient Ones that Hel gets away. That she hurries downstairs, and the people there help her.
But this isn’t the worst of it.
Gavril grabs the sweeping collar of my dress and rips the fabric, revealing my rune. “You seem hard to kill in this game we’re playing,” he says as Hel begins screaming and kicking the door. “And I’m certain Un Drallag is on his way. So if I can’t get you to the prince alive, I can at least grant him his second request. I can stop you from entering the Summerlands. All it requires is a little change in your trajectory.”
He reaches toward the fire, and when his hand appears over me, he’s holding my dagger. The last few inches of the tip are glowing with orange light from the heat of the flame.
The air in the room changes, and Gavril begins an eerie chant. I can’t process the words as magick swells around me with so much pressure it feels like the room might burst.
I can’t do anything but try and reach for Alexus, even as I curl my finger around Finn’s, needing someone to hold onto. I close my eyes and send another word along the bond. Help.
There in the darkness, my abyss is waiting, beckoning, pleading as hard as Alexus had pleaded, roiling and empty, cold and vast as death. I sense safety in that void, and I almost let my mind fall into it. I come so close.
But Gavril presses the flat side of the incandescent blade to my rune, and my soul screams.
36
ALEXUS
White-hot agony washes through the rune with bright familiarity.
It rips through my flesh, my blood, my bones. My mind. Gasping around the relentless pain, I stumble and slip on the tiled roof.
Rhonin wraps a hand around my arm, catching me before I fall. “I’ve got you.”
“They’re taking her from me, Rhonin. They’re hurting her.”
“I know, my friend.” He jerks me to my knees. “But we have to keep moving. The guards are coming.”
I can’t breathe. The misery of this moment—I remember it well.
Someone’s reversing the rune.
Tears flood my eyes, and my chest strains so tightly I think my sternum might shatter. But worse, my heart is being torn in two, shredded by an invisible beast I swear I will hunt and kill for this.
“Come on,” Rhonin insists. “Think of Raina. We have to find her.”
Through the red haze clouding my mind, I struggle to my feet and find my mettle. Rhonin and I run, leaping over one narrow alleyway after another, stair-stepping down rooftops until I know we’re close to the tavern. I had to leave Vexx and Rooke behind, too uncertain about killing them in case Vexx was telling the truth. The moment Raina’s torment scorched through the rune, I knew he was.
We drop to a one-story rooftop, my knees weak, then on to ground level. The Watch is coming. They might even meet us there.
