Power rippled over my skin, rising from the core, vibrating through every vein, matching the phantom pulse of the darkness in me searching for release.
All while Wells’ body began to surrender.
A memory cut through me, as unforgiving now as it was then. I shook my head, trying to banish it. But it gave me no compassion.
We were in the Roux Forest, sunlight threading through the trees. Callum was laughing with Elva, swooning as he tucked a wildflower behind her ear. She twirled another between her fingers, spinning, glowing.
Wells and I sparred in the clearing, blades in hand. He hadn’t awakened his magic yet, but his parents had just left on a voyage, and Callum could never resist strays.
He had practiced with every blade he and his father forged. It showed in the way he moved. He was born to be a soldier, maybe forced to be a welder.
I wasn’t watching him, not really, I was watching Callum and Elva. The way their laughter wrapped the air. Wells caught me off guard, his blade screaming across my cheek.
Screaming. That’s all there was. Elva screaming.
That’s all I remembered until the world steadied. Until my vision returned. When it cleared, Wells lie unmoving beneath me, blood leaking from his throat.
From two marks.
It seeped down onto his chest as it rose, weak and shallow. Black veins had already begun threading outward from the wound.
From where I had bitten him. Where I had lost control. He had become marked, become doomed.
And me, the girl fated to be a monster, I had made her real.
The curse had claimed him from that moment, biding its time. Waiting…
No. I shook my head, vanishing the image from me. Not this time.
Not fucking again.
My skull throbbed like it wanted to split.
“Where, Wells?” I couldn’t think clearly, only enough to ask, “Where is it?”
He pointed, hand shaking beneath his coat flap. The strap ripped into two with a single jerk of my wrist, leather hissing as it slipped from his shoulder. Glass clinked, bottles rattled off one another.
The vein in his neck pulsed madly, his heart dragging each beat out of him, yet it was only my own heartbeat I heard, hammering, suppressing every other sound.
Even the Viper had gone silent.
“What am I looking for?”
I grabbed the first bottle.Sleep aid.I stared at the label, then at him. This poor kid. I gently tossed it back in, careful not to crack it, like it might shatter him further.
My fingers curled around another, thicker, stained red. Please let this be it. Let this save him. I pulled it free and the air fell out of the world. My stomach dropped past my boots, down through the realm.
Venom Aid.
Fuck. Itwasmy fault.
All these years thinking he was okay, thinking my venom hadn’t been strong enough to do damage. He had told me he didn’t blame me, but there was no other being condemnable for this.
I held it in front of him, praying to whatever divine cruelty had cursed me that his sight hadn’t been taken too. “Is this it?”
He nodded, barely, a tremor more than a flicker. It was slow and pained, even that small movement costing the last scraps of his strength to stay conscious. To stay alive.
But thank the damned stars anyway.
