Bravo? Doesn’t he realize he’s next on my kill list?
I angle the gun in his direction. His wall of fire balloons, impairing my view of him. I flex my finger and shoot in his general direction. Though there’s a click, no bullet flies out.
Shit.
Fuck.
I toss the gun aside just as his fire touches the bedframe and skips onto the sheets. I whirl and roll Izolda off the bed, away from the magical flames. Pain streaks through the side of my body that was struck earlier and I yelp.
I hear my name being shouted as I stumble off the bed and smack into a window. I lift my bleeding finger and draw waves to shatter the glass. All I manage are uneven squiggles that dribble instead of sink into matter.
“Konstantin!” I choke out, trying to spot him through the billowing smoke.
“Release him of his necklace, and I extinguish my fire,Vryna!” Bohdan barks, using my genus instead of my name—indubitably to belittle me.
I wear my heritage with such pride that it only emboldens me.
“Do as he says,” my Faerie King cries out.
My eyes water. My throat blazes. My lungs shrivel.
“Very well,” Bohdan says. “Syncope it will be. I can’t guarantee that Izolda will be alive when you come to.”
“Isla,please!” Konstantin begs me.
Perspiration slicks my neck, matting my borrowed hair to my skin.
“Relieve me of the talisman!” Konstantin shouts over the incessant chime filling my ears.
He mustn’t be healed, otherwise he could’ve rid the cabin of oxygen to snuff out the conflagration or redirect the blaze.
“First, Bohdan puts out his flames,” I splutter.
“You’re in no place to make demands, Miss Ríhbiadh.”
Cauldron, I should’ve fed him my first bullet.
“Pull back your fire,” I wheeze, “and I release Konstantin of his bargain.”
I’m almost surprised when the sweltering wall recedes, leaving behind darkness, ashen corpses, and a cloying stench that turns my stomach.
Though Konstantin’s shirt is in cinders, and his skin, dark with soot, he’s alive. I peer over my shoulder at Izolda. In the glow of Bohdan’s retracted flames, I spy her chest rising and falling.
“Your turn,” says the male who lusts after my lover’s kingdom.
Everything in my chest throbs, in part because of the bullet, in part because of my despair. In Crow, I croak, “The bullet is still inside me. I don’t know how long I?—”
“Best be long enough to release Korol of his necklace,” Bohdan singsongs in perfect Crow, “or your fiancé will wake upto a world with one less Crow and one less sister in it. And I’m not talking about Ksenia.”
Larynx aching as deeply as the left side of my body, I sag against the cabin wall, praying that if Vance fell under the spell of the slumbering fumes, he will wake soon.
Konstantin hobbles toward me, using the wall for balance. “Isla, my love”—his voice is scratchy from exertion and smoke inhalation—“I don’t need it.”
But he does, for I cannot live in a world without him.
When he finally reaches me, he cups my cheek. “Let him have it.”
“I’m counting to three. One…”
