Tears stream down my face as terrified, furious sobs rip free. I scramble away from him on hands and knees, slipping in the snow, desperate to put distance between us.
He watches me.
Eyes fixed with a predator’s focus as he stalks forward.
“No,” I choke, scrambling to my feet.
My gaze catches on something beyond him. The dead Fae male near the shattered library window, his glassy eyes wide, staring straight through me.
“Leave me alone!” I scream.
Something changes.
The wolf falters. His eyes soften, confusion bleeding through the feral intensity. A low whimper escapes his massive jaws as his body shifts, bones cracking, fur receding.
When he stands again, it is on two legs.
Luceran stumbles, barely steady. He reaches for me, hands shaking, but I retreat.
“Neve,” he says, his voice ragged, broken, threaded with pain. “It is not what you think.”
“Liar!” I scream. “You murdered Pax. You killed all those people.”
My throat tightens, the last accusation bursting free with everything I have left.
“Just like you killed your wife.”
He grips his hair at the roots, shaking his head violently. “That isn’t what happened,” he says. “You must believe me. That wasn’t Pax out there. It was the demon wearing hisskin.” His breath stutters. “It was Pax who killed those people. Not me. I was trying to stop him.”
He drops to his knees in the snow before me, shoulders collapsing inward as though the weight of centuries has finally crushed him.
“Just as I tried to stop Aluna,” he whispers. “It called her name. Drew her to the water.” His head bows, grief carving deep lines into a face once as still and implacable as the frozen lake. “It took her. Twisted her. Turned her into something that killed before dragging her down.”
He looks up at me then, and the tears in his eyes hurt more than the blood soaking the snow.
“I loved my wife, Neve,” he says brokenly. “I would not allow the world to believe her capable of such evil. I would not let that be the memory she left behind.” His voice cracks. “So I became the monster they needed to blame.”
I want to believe him.
I want to fall to my knees and pull him into my arms, to comfort him, to take his pain into myself.
But my body refuses.
Not now. Not with the snow stained red. Not after everything I have seen.
“Neve, please,” he begs, crawling toward me, his trembling fingers brushing the toe of my boot.
I stumble back. “Don’t touch me,” I gasp.
“Neve.”
He reaches again, then recoils suddenly. His hand curls into a fist and slams against his chest, claws digging into the flesh above his heart. He gasps sharply, eyes going wide, then pitches forward, catching himself in the snow.
Still, I don’t move. Even as his heart fails before my eyes.
Then footsteps crunch behind me.
I turn, bracing for another horror, but it is Atilia.
