I hugged her and pressed a kiss to her hair.
Her wonderful scent filled my nose with frosty cherry and ice-cream. A part of me wondered if the heightened senses—the way I could smell her, taste her, hear her, were yet another gift of this awakening.
I smelled her very spirit instead of her body. Which meant...hopefully, I would be able to find her in another life. I’d track her across whatever realms or afterlife existed and make her mine again.
Lucien...Her horror echoed through me. But I couldn’t look at her anymore.
Marcus called me a god.
He made me sound invincible, yet I was still at his mercy.
I was still that pathetic child who had no one.
But I would never, fuckingever,let him put his hands on her which meant...he has to die.Immediately.
“Ah, ah, ah.” He waggled his finger as fire coiled around my neck. “Do you really want me to punish you again? Have you not learned your lesson?” He pouted as he pointed at Rook. “Do you really want her to suffer because of you?”
I bared my teeth, smoke coalescing into ember wings. “She’ll suffer if I don’t kill you.”
He laughed like he’d done for so many years.
A sarcastic arrogant chuckle and...
I snapped.
My skin split with snarling gold.
The air combusted in expanding rings and the trees protecting Marcus and his men ignited into hot torches.
I flung open my heart.
I gave the fire everything.
Kill them.
Kill every last one of them.
Marcus raised his arm again.
The harmonic wave slammed into me. Agony detonated. My spine arched as the last dregs of blood sprayed from my mouth but...the pain wasn’t enough to stop me.
I was too far gone.
No longerhuman.
Flaming fingers of fire wrapped around the men’s throats. Every last one of them—including the ones who’d held me down on the table for surgery and forced needles into my veins.
One by one, their howls lit up the night.
The fire pushed them toward that inescapable edge where flesh and bone turned into a rain of blood and brain.
A single decision and they imploded.
Marcus stumbled back a step. “I-Impossible.”
Rook yelled something.
My eyes locked on the trees where Whisper had vanished and...the fire just keptburning.
