Kamith shifted, but her blade pressing hard into his neck stopped him. Cassius slowly eased away from the soldiers, eyes on the bitten, who foamed at the mouth. The soldiers holding her struggled.
“We’re going to walk out of here.” Thalia angled herself toward the door. “And you’re going to let us go.”
The queen’s eyes blazed as Cassius took a step toward Thalia.
“I don’t expect we’ll see each other again,” Thalia said, taking another step.
“I am sorry,” the queen said, her face hard. “I wanted better for you.”
The soldiers released the bitten.
It lunged toward Cassius. Thalia moved, her knife slicing across Kamith’s throat, and her mother screamed.
Cassius’s hand punched through the bitten’s chest. It froze, eyes flickering, before he ripped out its heart, letting it splatter to the ground. The soldiers charged. Thalia tossed him her knife, and he plunged it into the neck of the first one before his hand punched through the armor of another, ripping his spine in half. The other two were quickly dispatched.
Thalia’s heart pounded as Cassius arrived at her side, hands dripping. The queen stood by Kamith’s body, her gown soaking up his blood. Reina stood in front of her, sword drawn.
Thalia stared at her mother, at the woman she’d never really known.Kill her,her mind screamed.
But staring at her mother, at the woman who stood in the growing pool of her lover’s blood, she couldn’t. And perhaps she’d just damned all of Vaccarium because of it.
“I wished better for you too,” Thalia choked out.
Then she grabbed Cassius’s hand, and they fled.
Chapter Forty-Five
Thalia finally pulled her horse to a stop.
They’d left Corithian behind, nothing but blood in their wake.
She half fell off her horse, whirling to Cassius, who dismounted clumsily. “Tell me what to do,” she rasped, hands clenching in his bloodied shirt. “Tell me.”
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
“There has to be something. Feed from me; that will help you—”
“Thalia.” He gripped her face. “There’s nothing to be done.”
She didn’t realize she was crying until his thumb swept over her cheeks, catching her tears.
“It will be okay,” he whispered.
She shook, gripping his hands. “Cassius—”
“We need to get back to Vaccarium. We need to tell them everything.”
She fought past the bile in her throat, the acid burning her cheeks. She forced herself to mount her horse, to keep it together as they rode hard toward the forest stretching in the distance.
To not sink into despair as Cassius’s hands tightened harder around her waist as if afraid to let go.
Chaménos was quiet.
Eerie silence bled into the air as they traveled through the forest. The gray trees reached their skeletal limbs together, blotting out the sky above their crimson leaves.
Thalia’s heart didn’t stop pounding.
“How long do we have?” she whispered, even though there was no need to be quiet. No one was in the forest, and if any creatures attacked … well, she hoped they did.
