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Julian hits the floor, and I jump on top of him, my knees driving hard into his chest. His fangs snap frantically in the air, his hands clawing at my wrists, his fingernails raking across my skin.

He doesn’t leave a single scratch, shadows leaking out of my pores and encasing me in some kind of impossible armor.

"What... what are you—" he chokes out, his Southern drawl completely vanishing into a reedy, strangled croak. "The unmaking... you should be bleeding... your mind should be mine⁠—"

"I have a mate," I snarl down into his face.

"Wait—Vivienne, wait—the Council⁠—"

"I don't give a fuck about your stupid Council."

I don't bother with Latin or whatever the fuck other spell shit I always imagined magic needed.

I just reach into the center of my chest, grab the loose thread of his existence, and pull.

The unmaking doesn't burn like fire. It pours out of my palm in a silent torrent of freezing nothingness—liquid midnight, pure black. It surges down his throat, flooding every capillary, every stolen pint of blood, every inch of immortality stitched into his rotten soul.

Julian doesn't get a dramatic death speech.

He didn't even explode like in the movies. He just kind of... deflated. Like when you empty a vacuum cleaner bag into the trash and a cloud of gray lint poofs into your face.

“Ew,” I manage, my stomach churning.

His pale, youthful skin instantly loses its moisture, shriveling into a brittle, paper-thin husk. The black hair on his scalp turns dry and white, crumbling away into dust in the span of two heartbeats. The crimson irises of his eyes turn milky, then collapse inward into gray powder.

His fangs splinter like chalk. His cheekbones cave in.

A, rattling sigh wheezes out of his throat, and then his entire body collapses into ash. I let go of his throat, stumbling backward onto my heels.

Where the great, terrifying Head of House Sanguine had been lying two seconds ago, there is now only a knee-high mound of fine gray dust.

A stray draft catches the edge of the pile, puffing a fine cloud of vampire lint into the air. I sneeze.

Behind me, the blood mages stand frozen in the doorway.

They look at the empty boots. They look at the gray pile on the floor. Then, slowly, three pairs of terrified eyes shift upward to look at me, a sneezing woman in torn jeans and a messy bun, with liquid nothingness crackling across her knuckles.

"Run," I say.

They don't bother using magic. They drop their daggers, turn on their heels, and sprint out into the rainy courtyard so fast two of them collide in the doorway, scrambling over each other like cockroaches when the kitchen light flips on.

House Midnight’s heavy doors slam shut behind them with a boom.

Silence crashes over the foyer.

The only sound left in the house is the domestic crackle of the black hearth fire burning in the library, and the sound of my own uneven breathing.

I look down at my hands.

The darkness fades, sinking quietly back beneath my skin, leaving behind only the Celtic knot.

My head doesn't hurt, there’s no blood.

I survived.

And then I look down at the floor.

Right in the center of the grand entryway, ground deep into the fibers of an irreplaceable rug, is an eight-pound mound of Julian St. George. Gray ash is smeared across the borders, ground into the fringe, and dusting the baseboards.