Thalia forced her legs to move, to unstick herself from where she’d been frozen.
Rage like she’d never known slammed into her. It fueled her steps as she roared and charged.
She didn’t look at Cassius’s shredded form as she slammed into the creature, her limbs reverberating as she tried to strike it with her knife.
The creature turned, and quick as an asp, its jaws sank straight into her arm.
Thalia screamed, pain blinding her as the creature lifted her up.
She was going to lose her arm—
It froze, shuddering, as its jaw opened and dropped her to the ground. Thalia hit the dirt, moaning.
The creature screamed, shaking its head. Its mouth began foaming quicker, spittle flying.
“Thalia!” Keegan grabbed her uninjured arm, hauling her up.
The world swayed.
The creature stumbled, shrieking as its mouth started to steam. It fell into one of the craters, beginning to twitch.
The queen screamed, stumbling toward the creature, clutching her chest as though she were being burned from the inside out.
Then the queen looked down, watching the metal of Larellia’s scythe embed in her chest. She looked at her daughter. Blood dribbled from her mouth. “Thalia—”
“Now!” Larellia roared, pulling out her scythe, and the queen collapsed, staring unseeing at the trees. Keegan left Thalia’s side and they surged to the creature, their blades sinking into its armored hide like moss.
The creature continued to shriek, its lips steaming and peeling back from its mouth. But Larellia and Keegan didn’t stop.
“Wait—” Thalia stumbled to the pool.
Larellia chopped off its head, and they waited, hardly daring to breathe. The tendrils in its neck stretched toward its body, but whatever was happening in its mouth was spreading.
Its skin was decaying, falling apart at the seams. The tendrils from its severed neck withered into nothingness.
It seemed as though the whole forest let out a collective sigh and the rest of its body slowly flaked away, until it was nothing more than a pile of ash.
Chapter Forty-Six
“What happened?” Keegan panted, eyes wide. He directed his question at Thalia, but she’d already stumbled away.
“No, no, no,” she cried, falling to her knees by Cassius’s broken body.
His chest was a gaping hole; part of his hip was missing. She knew he wasn’t dead, not wholly.
She cradled his head with her good arm, the other still leaking blood.
Tears streaked down her cheeks, and Keegan came up, sinking beside her. Larellia and Lady Decima appeared too; the other Mages must have arrived and begun holding the fire at bay, trying to stop it from destroying all of Chaménos. But she didn’t care.
Thalia raised her bleeding arm.
“Thalia—” Larellia cautioned, and she paused. “Cassius was bitten. Even if your blood heals him, he will be turned into something else.”
“I don’t care,” Thalia snarled.
“He could bite you,” Keegan warned, his voice hoarse. “You could turn into one of us. He has the poison in him. If you turned into a bitten, he’d never forgive himself for it.”
“I don’tcare.” Thalia’s tears dripped onto Cassius’ face. His face was so cold and pale it was as if he’d become a corpse.
