Of course. He said he wouldn't help us. Couldn't help us.
But then I thought — maybe he had.
Rocco lunged. He moved so fast Lucien didn't even have time to flinch before Rocco's fangs tore into his throat. Lucien screamed — a raw, animal sound that bounced off the stone walls — and blood sprayed in a hot arc, painting the floor, the walls, spattering warm across my skin where I lay pinned to the altar.
He was dying. Right there, just feet from me, Lucien was dying.
The spell. The spell.
I arched my back against the cold stone and screamed the words at the ceiling. "Cruor meus, clavis tua. Aperi!"
Vex whipped toward me. His hand cracked across my face, snapping my head sideways, and the world fractured into white-hot light. My teeth sliced the inside of my cheek. Blood filled my mouth. The back of my skull bounced off the altar, and for one terrible second, everything went dark.
But something shifted. The air itself seemed to exhale — a pressure I hadn't even realized was crushing me suddenly released, like a fist unclenching around my chest.
The invisible weight holding me to the stone—gone.
I could move.
Vex raised the blade over Raven.
I shoved her with everything I had. She flew off the altar and hit the floor with a heavy thud, and Vex’s blade came down into the empty stone. The crack echoed through the chamber like a gunshot.
But the blade was intact. Still razor sharp. Still deadly.
“Youbitch,” he snarled.
I swung my legs off the altar and kicked the golden vase. It toppled, struck the floor, and the lid popped free, spinning across the stone.
Two things happened at once.
Vex howled and recoiled, turning his face away as if something inside the vase burned to even look at. And across the room, Rocco wrenched his fangs from Lucien’s throat and screamed—a guttural, inhuman sound, his body convulsing, hands clawing at his own skull. Whatever was radiating from that open vase, the demon inside Rocco felt it too.
Lucien crumpled. He hit the floor like something boneless, blood sheeting down his throat, pooling beneath him in a widening dark stain. His eyes were closed. His chest didn’t move.
No. No, no, no.
Vex ran around the altar in three swift strides, grabbed Raven by the shoulder, and rolled her onto her back. He pressed the blade to her throat. “Put the lid back on.” His voice shook. “Now.Or I kill the bitch.”
I looked at him—really looked at him. The tremor in his hand. The way his eyes kept darting to the open vase like it was a lit fuse. The sweet beading on his skin.
He was going to kill her anyway. We both knew it.
That’s when I knew. The shard was inside the vase—and he couldn’t touch it.
I smiled.
I plunged my hand into the vase and my fingers closed around something that felt like a heartbeat. I pulled it free, and the shard pulsed in my palm—warm, alive,furious. Raw power flooded up my arm, into my chest, behind my eyes.
It blazed pure white. The entire chamber erupted in light, searing every shadow from the walls, the ceiling, the hollows of Vex’s horrified face.
Across the room, Rocco’s mouth tore open in a silent scream. Black smoke poured from his throat, nose, his eyes—thick and oily, writing like something alive being dragged out against its will.
Vex plunged the blade down toward Raven’s chest.
“No!” The word ripped out of me, and I raised the shard. It burned like a star in my fist. “I send you back to hell.”
The air split open.
