Cold. She was too cold. Cael needed to warm her up.
“What did you do?” he whispered.
“Pretty fucking spectacular, right?” she croaked, gasping for breath. “I think my rescue skills might be even more dramatic than yours.” She reached beneath her collar, stiff and coated with blood, and pulled out the flute. She pressed it into his palm. “Call the dragon. Leonard released her.”
Her eyes slid shut and Cael patted her bloody cheek. “Don’t you fucking die on me, Xenia Cirillo. Don’t youdare!” He bit into his wrist, pressing the wound to her cold lips and trying to force his blood into her mouth. She coughed it back up, couldn’t swallow a drop.
She cupped his cheek, pulling his face toward hers. Her voice was so faint he barely heard it above the pounding of his panicked heart.
“Tell Cass…” she sucked in a shuddering breath, blood oozing from her chest and staining her teeth, “…tell Cass that I wanted to see her again. So much. That I’m sorry I won’t be there to watch her take down Eamon.”
“You’ll tell her yourself,” Cael sobbed, clutching Xenia’s hand on his face. “You’re not going to die.”
A soft smile parted her lips. “You’re so much stronger than you think.” Her emerald eyes hardened with determination. “This willnotbreak you.”
She pressed her lips against his, then whispered against them, “I love you, Cael. Every part of you.”
And then she became very still.
“Blondie? Zee?Xenia!” He shook her shoulders, but he couldn’t rouse her. His Fae hearing detected the faintest pulse of her heartbeat. She may have lost consciousness, but she wasn’t completely gone. Not yet.
He slipped the cuff from her wrist and placed it on his own, then sent a frantic message as the sun slid below the horizon.
He placed the flute at his lips and blew into it. A single, piercing note echoed through the world.
“Signys,” he said aloud.
Then scooped up Xenia, tapped the cuff and portaled back to the lodge.
To fucking finish this.
Cael appearedin his bedroom with Xenia’s limp body cradled in his arms, and prayed to every real and false God in Ethyrios that the message he’d just sent had reached its intended recipient.
And that the male was on his way.
Xenia was still unconscious as he laid her on the bed, but every few moments her chest shuddered upward.
He cursed himself for making that stupid blood vow. It hadn’t even mattered in the end. He’d never said his vows to Elodie. She wasn’tElodieat all. Which meant he’d never been constrained by the vow. And Arran hadn’t harmed Xenia. The little fool had led herself to death’s door all on her own.
But Cael would be damned before he’d let her walk through it.
He stripped off her dress, then cleaned and bandaged her wound as he awaited his guest. He peered out the window and down into the backyard.
What he saw was enough to momentarily pull his attention from the woman slowly dying in his bed.
In the burgeoning twilight, the wedding guests were tearing each other apart.
Tomas, Viktor and Arran stood atop the altar, hands raised and striking out with gusts of wind. A large black bear—Phidion?—was fighting a golden mountain lion, claws and fur flying. Caelthought the lion might have been one of his mother’s distant relatives? Had Phidion and Zosime known of this plan all along? And if so, did they even have a daughter named Elodie?
Cael didn’t fucking care. He was about to endallof it.
He searched the chaos for Erik and Petra, but didn’t see either of them. Cael hoped Erik had gotten their mother to safety. Hoped they were fleeing the estate at this very moment.
Cael would be fleeing as well. Soon.
Kaleidoscopic light flared behind him and he turned, relief shuddering his chest.
Trophonios strode toward him. “What happened? I got your message. You said Tristan was able to?—”
