The Keep was quiet. Hundreds of dead lay around us. My shoulders slumped, and I sought out Rowan.
Moira stood next to Ethan, both covered in blood and gore, but they were okay. I shot her a soft smile.
She returned it and touched her heart.
Following the bond, I turned to see Rowan walking toward me, maybe a quarter of a mile away. A deep scratch marred his cheek. His hands were covered in blood, and his clothing was torn, but he was upright.
Mine.
I smiled and started walking toward him, too tired to run. From his pace, I expected he was too.
My smile widened, but a warning tingle brushed against my skin. I stilled, my eyes sweeping across the land trying to pinpoint where the potential threat was coming from. Frustration rose in my stomach when I couldn’t see anything.
I kept walking, picking up my pace. Rowan frowned and did the same.
A man came into view behind Rowan, tall and muscled, with familiar storm-colored eyes. He leapt through the air, his right hand tipped with wicked claws, sailing right toward my mate’s exposed back.
Chapter
Thirty-Four
MOIRA
Iknew many things about Evie Quinn. I knew she hated cucumbers with the fire of a thousand suns and gagged when someone was cutting one. I knew she liked nature documentaries, especially the ones narrated by men with European accents. I knew she loved my cookies, especially my snickerdoodles, but felt bad about asking me to make them for her because she didn’t want to bother me.
I knew she loved the rain and the sound of rushing water and how wet sand felt between her toes. I also knew she felt guilty about hating carnations because she was a creature of the gods and thought that meant she had to love everything that came from the ground.
I knew her fake laugh and her polite laugh, and the one she used when she was humoring someone but planned to verbally eviscerate them later.
I even knew her screams—the high-pitched one when she was frightened, the one that sounded like someone gargling marbles when she was frustrated, and the one she made late at night when a nightmare would drag her from the depths of a restless sleep.
But I had never, in all the years I’d known her, heard a scream like that rip from her throat when Caelan came for Rowan. The sound brought me to my knees, grief spreading like a virus through my veins.
It was the sound of agony, of the earth mourning, of despair and horror, and love shattered far before its time.
I tucked that sound, as painful as it was, into my heart so I would know it if, the gods forbid, she ever made it again.
And as I sat on my knees with my heart shattering, I knew one more thing.
My best friend would not make it in time to save Rowan from the certain death barreling toward him.
Chapter
Thirty-Five
Iwasn’t going to make it. My legs pumped as I ran for Rowan, heart shattering into a thousand pieces and wishing I had seen our potential earlier, seenhimearlier.
If I had, we wouldn’t be here on a battlefield surrounded by the dead.
Time slowed as I ran for him. Rowan hadn’t yet realized death was at his back, but I saw the moment he realized my expression had changed from one of relief into one of horror.
He would be too late, too.
An agonized scream ripped from my throat. In a last-ditch effort to save him, I leapt toward Caelan, a spear of hawthorn coated with poison forming in my hands as I flew. Magic tore from my veins, burning through me like a wildfire.
I willed myself closer, promised the universe anything it ever wanted if it allowed me to save Rowan, even if it meant sacrificing my life.
Imoved, a pop of air the only sound of the magic finally working. A second later I was before Caelan, reaching for his neck with one hand, and spearing him through the chest with the other.
