The keeper holds out his left hand, palm up.
I quickly extend my claws and give my brother a questioning glance.
He slides on over to me, lets me prick his finger, and then he squeezes a few drops onto the keeper’s palm.
The keeper focuses back on the panthers, but I don’t miss the tension around his eyes and lips that tells me there’s worry beneath his confident façade.
If this doesn’t work, I don’t know when or if he’ll be able to try again. He can’t use his dark magic openly in any city environment—it involves taking life, and life-taking has the strong potential to draw attention we don’t want.
I try to shake off my misgivings as glistening, dark light drips upward off the keeper’s palm, concentrated around the droplets of blood, gathering them up and lifting them into what appears to be a ball of inky fluid.
The concentration on the keeper’s face becomes intense while the sphere of dark magic floats above his palm, casting shadows that make his brown eyes appear black.
With a twitch of his fingers, the sphere splits into three smaller orbs, each one turning slowly in the air.
I back away, as do Anarchy and Lucian, our footsteps crunching softly in the sand while the panthers are now visibly shivering where they remain only a few paces from the keeper.
Above us, clouds gather in the sky, obscuring the remaining hue of sunset and casting us into sudden darkness. So dark that I pull off my blindfold.
The three spheres begin rotating around each other, each one also turning on its axis, now spinning faster and faster.
In the distance, the waves churn and lightning scatters across the sky. Goosebumps rise on my skin as the wind whips around us, and I find myself pressing my hand to my chest; the same gesture the keeper makes when my emotions are heightened.
Right now, it’s his power that thrums through me, seeming to reach across the distance between us to tug at my body and mind.
A thrill of fear makes me shiver when, in the distance, a tree at the edge of the beach crumbles into dust—and then another—the debris swept up in the fierce wind.
The keeper raises his hands, at the same time releasing the spheres into the air at his eye level, and then silence falls, a deep, dark silence, even though the waves continue to churn, the wind plucks at my clothing and hair, and the force around us presses in on my chest.
“Trust me,” the keeper whispers, his glittering eyes meeting mine, all black and full of magic, before the spheres shoot forward.
The dark magic takes on the form of spears a split second before they pierce the shivering panthers’ hearts.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Acry of alarm rests on my tongue.
I’m leaping forward, only to be hit with the explosion of magic thrown backward in the rush of energy.
It ripples over me as my fall registers, the sand now a hard surface at my back while Anarchy and Lucian knock against the ground on my left and smoke billows across the air above us.
The keeper’s form is changing in the distance, becoming the black dragon with furious golden eyes, dominating my vision.
He inhales deeply, so strongly that it tugs at my feet and then my thighs, pulling me a few inches across the sand toward him—along with the smoke.
Rolling onto my stomach, I make it up onto my hands and knees, clawing at the grit to stay in one place until the pull abruptly stops and the dragon’s furious breathing fills the air.
I spin toward the panthers, feeling like I’m chewing on the heart I don’t have anymore.
Please let them be okay.
My eyes widen.
I let my breath out again.
Three heartbreakingly beautiful men stand on the beach, each one lean and as sleek as they looked when they were panthers.
All three have pointed ears, high cheekbones, and luminous, blue eyes the same shade as Anarchy’s. Their hair is long, in varying shades of lilac, but that’s where the major similarities stop.
