62. Kat
Kat
I took too long to find Bastian in the melee. When I finally did, I understood why. He wasn’t at his normal height but down on one knee, blood spilling from his thigh. Too much blood.
Pulse pounding not just at my temples and throat, but in my face, I felt as though it was taking over my entire body.
Still, he blocked one blow and another.
Unable to look away, I stumbled from behind the boulder and groped on the ground for one of the enemy’s arrows. Every strike upon his sword shook my bones.
My fingers closed on an arrow shaft and I nocked it, drew, aimed.
I didn’t get to exhale, calm and ready to fire.
A sword erupted from Bastian’s stomach as he parried the warrior before him.
Crimson. Glinting metal. His face dropping.
I let out a cry, went to shoot, realised the arrow I’d picked up was broken.
But not as broken as Bastian.
The blade wrenched from his stomach.
The shadows of his sword vanished, leaving only steel. The glow in his eyes went out.
He fell.
“No. No .” The bow fell from my trembling fingers as panic buzzed against my face harder and harder with each frantic heartbeat.
Not this. Not this .
Not Bastian.
A terrible heat engulfed me, like pressure that needed release, and when I yanked off my gloves, my hands were black. Not purple— black . And something dark spilled from them.
That trembling… it wasn’t fear but rage.
That buzz… it wasn’t panic but power.
You hold on too tight.
Then I would let go.
Skin prickling, poison hazing from me thicker than it had in Kaliban’s house, I straightened my back and reached out.
I gathered the magic vibrating against my skin, and purple mist rolled off me. There was only me and the power that consumed my entire focus.
Once I’d used up the nearby magic, I reached out with my mind. I grabbed the rocks and their low resonance, the land’s heady hum, the pine trees’ higher, more complex vibrations.
Sometimes the power tried to slither away, but I gritted my teeth and yanked it to me.
You are mine.
My poison formed a low mist over the ground, thickening with every second.
It seeped out of me like every angry word I’d only thought and not been able to say.
It deafened me like every scream I’d ever held in.
It rose and rose like a flood fed by every emotion I’d locked inside and poisoned myself with.
Except now, that poison spread out, filling the space at the base of the cliff.
Dimly, I registered that there was still a fight. Bastian. Alive. Only one half of him had been killed.
But I’d seen it. I’d felt it—a fissure in my fucking soul.
And I wasn’t about to let it happen again.
I clawed more power to me. The trees on the edge of the clearing turned brown, their branches wilting.
You are mine. You will see to it that I don’t die today—that he doesn’t die today.
He turned wide eyes upon me, a cut on his chin dripping, more blood on his cheek.
Around us, fae stumbled, their attack forgotten. They clawed at their shins, first, then the dark tendrils reached above their collars and up to their faces. They scratched at their cheeks and throats, like they could scrape my poison out.
Bodies arching, eyes screwing shut, the fae opened their mouths in cries I couldn’t hear over my own roaring rage.
One by one, they fell, disappearing in my poison’s haze.
Only Bastian and I remained standing.
He was alive. I’d saved him. My magic had saved him.
Lips parted, he regarded me. “That was… incredible.”
Needing to touch him to be sure he was really here and really all right, I started towards him, but my foot hit something. The mist swirled and revealed a body.
A woman, curled up, her face contorted in death.
It was the easiest thing I’d ever read.
Pain.
Terrible, terrible pain.
That I had caused.
I swallowed and edged around her, but there was another. A young man, this time, scratches down his cheeks from where he’d tried to rid himself of the creeping agony.
My rage evaporated.
All these people. I’d killed them.
How many? Twenty? Thirty? More?
Lives ended in agony.
I stared at my hands stained deep, dark purple, the poison still rolling off of them.
Stop , I told it. Stop .
But it didn’t… I couldn’t…
I’d let go and now I couldn’t control it. Panic filled my throat, pounded in my chest, painful and tight.
“Kat? Are you—?”
“Don’t.” I shook my head, stomach churning. “Don’t look at me. I’m a monster.”
He caught my shoulders like he wasn’t horrified by the death dripping from my fingers. He met my gaze and cupped my cheek, his warmth only dimly registering through the tingling magic. “You’re not a monster. You’re glorious .”
He was wrong.
I was out of control. I was a killer. A—
Something smacked into me and I stumbled forward into his arms. I tried to draw breath to speak, but… couldn’t.
Bastian paled, eyes wide, jaw slack.
Now he looked horrified.
Sluggish with grey blotches pressing at the edge of my vision, I followed his gaze down to my chest.
Blood. Steel in a familiar pointed shape.
An arrow head.
Then darkness.