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Edward continues to toy with my hair.
“Why is she so young?” I whisper.
We were born at the same time. We should be the same age.
“The tonic our mother took because of her vanity,” Edward whispers. The truth sends my insides alight with rage. “She shares your curse in a different form. She can’t grow past the age of seven, not unless you sign this.” He takes a quill and places it into my fingers. He presses against my palm, and I wince as he breaks the skin with its sharp tip. “Sign in blood,” he informs me.
An arrow shoots into the contract, making me jump.
I look up, finding Ze’ev’s chest heaving. Monsters unfurl from the shadows and grab him, dragging him to his knees.
“Sign it,” King Njord growls. “Before I change my mind and end him right now. Because you mated the Outcast, he’s more difficult to influence, and I don’t have patience for insubordination.”
I glance around, wondering what this influence is that has all my mates under a dark spell.
Are they the revenants? King Njord seems to be able to control them, to an extent.
But not fully.
Because they don’t belong to him.
That’s when I notice the tower and how Arwan is dragging Cain toward it.
That’s it.
Taking all of my vials, I hesitate, only for a moment.
They’ve always been my backup.
When something went wrong, my vials are how I’ve gotten by.
My defects have always been something I’ve needed to hide, to compensate for, and to overcome.
Not anymore.
Crying out, I rip them from my thigh and smash them all onto the ground. The shattering of glass breaks my heart.
One of them is a destruction vial, which probably should have killed us all on the spot, but King Njord’s influence has numbed all other sources of magic. I figured out that much when Sofia showed me how the emptied vial drew the attention of the creatures.
Darkness yawns open beneath us, making Edward release me as King Njord drops my sister.
I grab her.
But she falls right through my fingers.
She falls right through me.
Stunned, I stare at my empty palms as I begin to hyperventilate.
Where is she?
What happened?
A strong arm hauls me out of the shadows, and I find that Godric has shifted into human form.
“Where?” he grits out, seeing the desperation on my face. I need him to take me somewhere.
“T-tower,” I instruct. He simply nods and tucks me against his chest, then drags me toward the shimmering obsidian walls.
