Enraged shock pooled down a bond crafted from shadow. Andrian didn’t hesitate. He launched over Matheo and Sebastian, the point of his sword aiming true. It sank into the neck of themudaewhose claws still dripped with Matheo’s blood, snarling as he pinned the creature to the blood-soaked grass. The othermudaescreeched, leathery wings stirring as they launched back into the sky.
The legion was gone as quickly as it had arrived.
Andrian turned, finding Mariah across the carnage of the clearing. Broken pain and empty rage filled his hollow chest, the brilliance of his eyes dulled and shadowed.
Behind her, someone chuckled.
“How does it feel?” Kol murmured, his voice soft, almost sensual. “I’ve always wondered. Is it like losing a piece of yourself?” His footsteps padded the ashen grass, boots halting a few paces from where Mariah’s hands gripped the earth.
“I suspect it feels the way I felt when a part of me was stolen. Perhaps I am finally returning the favor.” The softness was gone, now just a shadowed growl. Mariah couldn’t give him the attention he wanted, couldn’t tear her gaze from her dying Armature.
No. Not just an Armature. A friend. A brother. A companion when she’d had no one else. A light when everything around her had fallen to darkness.
His bond flickered. She reached within herself, grabbing onto it desperately, throwing it open. The magic was frazzled, a fractured mess, threads of fraying light trying desperately to hold on to a flickering consciousness at the other end. Mariah flung herself down the bond, imagining that she could sink talons into Matheo, could somehow make him stay.
“No. No, Matheo. You will not leave me. I’m your queen, and Icommandyou to stay.You will not leave me.” She spoke the words out loud, as clearly as she pushed them down their bond. He stirred, hazel eyes fluttering, and for a moment she let herself feel a dangerous sort of hope.
“I’m… I’m sorry.” He was so faint, so soft she almost missed the whispered thought. It floated through a darkening void, dissipating with the threads of her magic. A sob choked in her throat, but she refused to let her eyes well with tears. Refused to let the image of him blur.
“Tell Signe…that I wish we’d had more time.”
“You will tell her yourself.Stay.”
Even her command felt empty. It slipped into the void, evaporating into mist.
Mariah didn’t look away as Matheo’s eyes fluttered closed. The last of her magic woven into their bond fell into the ether.
The consciousness flickering at the other end snuffed out.
No. No. It happened so fast, that couldn’t be the end. He had so much still to live for.No no no no no?—
Sebastian released another broken cry. Andrian’s helpless agony folded around the shattered edges of her heart.
And seven bonds became six.
“It is a shame to lose a strong fighter like that, though.” Kol sighed. “As much as I revel in your agony, I do offer my sympathy.”
The dark god’s words snapped something in her.
All her past rage…it wasnothingcompared to this. The beast beneath her skin roared, its golden fire clawing up her throat, begging to be unleashed.
Her rage was so potent, so strangling, that she leashed it tightly. She would share this anger with no one, not even that other part of herself. The part of her that washer, that was human, was selfish in how she wanted to act.
Mariah dragged her gaze from Matheo’s lifeless form. She tilted her head up, finding Kol’s red-gold stare.
She fuckinghatedthat stare.
“Yoursympathy?” she whispered. Her rage burned in her throat, clawing at her skin. “I don’t want your sympathy. I want yourhead.”
Kol’s lip pulled back from his teeth in a snarl. “And I want what you stole from me!” Fury lashed from him like a flame, his voice rising. He clutched at his chest, as if he could feel whatever part of himself he imagined to be missing. “If you will not join me, then at least returnthat. Don’t let more people you love die on your behalf, Mariah. You don’t deserve their sacrifice.”
His words stabbed through her chest. She pushed to her knees. “Do you think I don’t know that?” The tears had finally come. They welled in her eyes, dripping down her face. “It doesn’t change that I have takennothingfrom you. Yet you have takeneverythingfrom me.” The pain and anger and heartbreak swirled in her chest, slicing and cutting and wrenching.
Kol scoffed, rolling his eyes. “I don’t have patience for liars.”
Something stilled in Mariah. The rage bubbled, hot and burning, but it focused like steel forged in a fire.
Kol was mad. She could see it on him—in the flickering in his eyes, in the writhing of his shadows, in the tight clench of his fists. He was unraveling, five millennia of solitary torment driving him to insanity. She thought back to what Rulene had told her, only weeks ago, but that felt now like a lifetime.
