Page 133 of Revenant

Her admission doesn’t catch me off guard; in fact, I assumed it.

“In my mind, if she wouldn’t have stood up to Eryx that day, he wouldn’t have felt the need to prove a point. And at the time, I held onto that resentment with an iron fist, because life was already hard enough—I didn’t need to add this on top of everything else.”

“That’s understandable, given the circumstances. You have to realize she didn’t know. Sure, Eryx was an asshole, but she never thought—”

Sage holds a hand up, cutting off my words. “I don’t blame her, Pryce. At least, not anymore. I’ve come to realize that, in a way, secretly this was a blessing. I always hoped for something better in life, my acceptance into The Hollowed felt like a second chance. A way to prove that I was more important than my coven thought I was. And now…” Her words drift, a smile playing on her face as though she’s gone through the five stages of grief, and she’s officially at acceptance.

“Now, I just want to live. However that looks.” I’m happy for her. It’s not typical for someone newly turned to accept their circumstances the way she has, but from what she’s shared with me, she finally has the ability to live—in some capacity—without answering to anyone else.

“I really hope everything goes to plan tonight. You deserve to be free of this place.” She spins on her heel and is gone, leaving me with a sense of dread I can’t seem to settle down.

The door at the far end, leading to the tunnels, clicks shut behind her, and I let myself back into the room.

Eryx has poured himself another glass, and naturally, doesn’t offer me one.

“Make this quick, Visconti,” Eryx clips, irritation grating on his words.

“There’s a blood moon tonight,” I state simply, already over this conversation.

He goes still. Glass halfway to his mouth, the amber catching the sconce light.

“The grimoire,” I say. “Bastian and Eldritch have been working through Veil’s spells with Alicent. Translating. Cross-checking what Eldritch remembers.” I let the next part come out slower because I want to watch his reaction. “We think we have it.”

“You think?” He sets the glass down, turning to face me. “Or you know?”

“We’re certain enough to bring it to you. Which is more than any of us owe you these days, but I’m told I have a generous nature. Non che tu te lo meriti.”

The corner of his mouth pulls slightly—not a smile, never that, just the muscle memory of one. I know he understands me. “And the source. You’ll need a lot of power to break the curse. Veil—”

“The alumni.” I push off the wall, not interested in reliving what she did to us all those years ago. “The strongest bloodlines in centuries will be in that ballroom, all under one roof. It’s our only chance.”

“Walk me through your plan,” he says. “Slowly. Because there have been many times you all improvised and I had to bury what was left of them in the woods behind the greenhouse.”

“Zara and Azalea will temporarily bind everyone to the ballroom while Alicent skims the power from every witch inside.”

“Skims.” He echoes the word back to me as if it tastes foul, returning his glass to his lips to wash it away. “And what governs how much it takes from them? You? Her? Or the magic itself, which has never once done what a Calder told it to without taking a pound of flesh in return.”

“Spread across that many of them, it should be a tithe. I’m sure they’ll feel something, but by the time they understand why, it’ll be finished.”

“You’re spreading the cost across the board and praying the room is big enough that no single person pays in full. But you don’t know that. You’re hoping for it. There’s a difference, and the difference has a body count. We can’t keep repeating the same mistakes, Pryce!”

“Then they’ll have given more than they planned to. They’re alumni of The Hollowed, Eryx. They knew the terms of the bargain when they swore it.”

“Don’t dress this up as consent. If we do this, we do it knowing what it is. I won’t have us lying to each other about the possibilities of what could happen.”

“Then we do it knowing the risk, because the alternative is to spend the rest of our existence in this godforsaken place, and I’m done waiting on a gentler way out that’s never coming.”

“And if it kills her?”

There it is. What he actually cares about, dressed up in concern for everyone else.

I square my shoulders, keeping my tone flat. “It won’t.”

“You don’t know that. Our creation killed Veil, and we had something she most certainly does not.”

“Alicent has the mirror.”

The glass shatters in his hand, and he’s across the room before the shards finish falling. He’s on me instantly, pinning me against the door with his forearm pinned to my chest, the old wood groaning behind my spine. He’s weak—hasn’t fed properly in months—and we both know I could put him through the wall without even trying. But I remain in place, because there are moments where letting a man have the illusion of control costs you nothing, and this is one of them.