Chapter 14 #2
Lucky and I flipped her to the side, and I smacked her back. What was she choking on? What had she drunk that she shouldn’t have?
Isla could have been working on something for all I knew…a child could be curious, think it was something colorful and tasty. Fuck, this was a mess!
“Did she drink one of your potions?” I yelled over my shoulder at Isla.
She didn’t answer.
“The drink…it wasn’t for her,” Egan whispered, a sob hitching in his throat. “It wasn’t for her! Gods!”
Wasn’t for her? My knee bumped something hard, metallic. I looked at the ground next to Rana.
My hot chocolate mug was empty, on its side. The hot chocolate was poisoned.
“What was in it?” I snapped. “Egan, what did you put in it?”
“I don’t know.” Egan grabbed fistfuls of his own hair. “I’m sorry, I…I don’t know!”
If he didn’t know it was because someone gave him the poison to give to me. Someone like Isla who wasn’t for one second going to help now that someone had drunk it down.
It wasn’t Thorn come to kill us off with spells.
It wasn’t a new monster. It was one we’d had in our midst all along, a snake hidden in the grass before she struck. Only her aim was off, and the strike hit someone else.
Isla tipped her chin up, her eyes locking with mine before sliding sideways, unable to hold my gaze as the darkness in me rose. Darkness that even she couldn’t stare into without flinching.
The witch had done this, but the drink…was not meant to be for Rana.
It was meant for me.
Harrison looked at me over Rana’s seizing body, his eyes full of the same fear in my heart. We couldn’t help her.
“Get your brother!” I yelled.
Veyyr was the only one that could help at this point. I didn’t know for sure, but he at least knew this world. Healing was not in my repertoire, not for something like this. Maybe he could force Isla to help?
“Hang on, Rana.” I held her forehead with one hand and kept a hand on her hip to keep her from flailing. “Lucky, get a blanket.”
Keeping her warm was the only thing I could think to do.
“That bitch…” the ogre snarled, “I’ll wring her fucking neck.”
“Get the fucking blanket, Lucky. We’ll deal with her later.” I didn’t look up. “Rana. Hang on, you just hang on.”
With my hand on her forehead, it wasn’t words that flooded through me but emotion.
Panic.
Fear.
Relief. And the words that gutted me, tearing into me as surely as the grief of losing my father.
Will I see my mama and daddy? I don’t want to be here…not without them.
“Not yet, you hang on. You gotta be strong in this world, you can do this, you are not alone, Rana,” I kept a tight hold on her and then Lucky was there, holding her with me. His eyes widened as her emotions bled into him.
“Fuck, hang on, little flower.”
Isla crouched next to us and pushed something into Rana’s mouth, I grabbed her wrist.
“If you want her to live, let me go.” She snapped.
I released her, and she shoved the small brown square into Rana’s mouth. I counted to twenty and then Rana gasped, her body going limp as the seizing stopped.
She stood. “That will do. She’ll be weak for a few days. Pity, that Egan would turn on his own.”
I looked up to see Egan’s eyes pop wide as he spluttered and stumbled backward.
“No, I didn’t! You—”
Too late. She flicked a hand at him, and the spell that hit him…there was no time to yell, no time to stop her. Like an arrow, the bolt of magic went straight through his heart, and he dropped without being able to say anything else.
Without being able to point a finger at Isla even though I already knew.
Dave let out a wail, running to try and catch Egan as he fell backward. “No! Not Egan!”
Veyyr was not here to see her strike her own—again.
And again, she’d get away with it, if it was left to him. That darkness in me rose, like a wolf from the shadows understanding that cutting the diseased from the pack was a necessity.
To save the others.
To keep those worth saving, safe.
A growl rolled up and through me, my thoughts barely my own.
I stood and put a hand on Lucky’s shoulder. “Stay with her.”
“You got it.”
Isla was acting for all the world like nothing had happened.
I went to the truck and pulled the Bone Town guard’s spear from under my pack.
“Egan was always trouble,” Isla huffed.
Dave sobbed quietly, his pain and grief covering my footsteps. I didn’t run, didn’t hurry. I wanted her to see me.
“Isla.” I fucking snarled her name.
She spun, her mouth open wide as I shoved the tip of the weapon into the center of Isla’s chest. Pulling the trigger the crystal pulsed and glowed, throbbing, feeling as if it were stuck to her flesh.
She slapped at the weapon, but the connection was a true suction, and we both watched as her magic was sucked into the crystal.
And then it popped free and Isla stumbled away, her hands moving. Trying to cast a spell.
The crystal on the tip sparkled like stardust now that it held her magic within.
“Impressive.” I rolled the weapon in my hand.
Veyyr stepped out of the shadows, Harrison right with him. Isla turned, saw him, and threw herself at him, sobbing, her hands to her chest. “She…did you see what she did? I gave the girl the antidote, like you would have wanted! I saved her!”
Fuck, not again. Why was it that every time Isla and I got into it, he only saw my retaliation to the witch?
Veyyr held out his hand and turned her away from the fire. “She won’t bother you again, Isla.”
Again, even now? Even after he’d…been gentle with me? Anger, hurt, fury, disappointment, they all tangled up in me which in another place I knew would have made me mean.
But I was too tired, too heartsick for mean. I settled for disappointment.
Isla looked over her shoulder at me, her smile not one of gratitude, but of triumph. Maybe it was just because she gave me a side-eye with her smile, but the mean in me roared back to life, and I flipped her off.
“Thank you, Veyyr,” She all but purred his name, leaning her face into his upper arm. “I can’t believe Egan would do this…so sad. I feel terrible but I could not have a traitor with us. You understand.”
So sad indeed…Dave sobbed over his friend’s body, begging Isla to take the fatal blow back.
Sorrow landed beside us and hopped over to Rana and Lucky, spreading his wings wide, a hiss rolling out of his beak as Isla drew close.
Protecting Rana.
I held the weapon in my hand, wondering if it would work on Veyyr. It had taken Isla’s magic, but would Veyyr be too much for it? Adjusting my stance, I reached for my sword. If I had to take them both on I would.
Even if the idea of ending Veyyr, of stealing his magic, did something deeply uncomfortable to me. Like I’d be cutting out a piece of my life I still wanted to be a part of.
“I should have done this the minute Mallory arrived,” Veyyr said. “Egan’s death is on me. I am sorry, Dave.”
He pulled his sword, and I tensed.
Not because I didn’t know what he was about to do.
Because I did.
Isla smiled and touched a hand to his hip. “Thank you for always believing me, Veyyr.”
The softness in her voice would have once made me doubt him.
Not anymore.
Veyyr’s fingers tightened at the back of her collar and he pushed her forward. She stumbled, spun to look at him, that same smug curl still lifting her mouth—
The blade flashed.
Clean. Efficient. There was no hesitation in him.
Her head separated from her body in a single smooth arc, like he’d practiced the motion a thousand times. Her expression didn’t change. Not even surprise. She was still smiling as her body forgot how to hold itself upright.
Silence fell heavy.
The air snapped with ozone as Veyyr’s magic crawled over his skin, anger burning bright enough to taste. Sparks flickered at his shoulders, along his jaw, his eyes lit with something raw and unrestrained.
I did not look at the blood first.
I looked at him.
He did not look triumphant.
He did not look cruel.
He looked…done.
Isla’s head struck the floor with a dull thud. Her body followed a heartbeat later, collapsing in on itself, blood spreading fast and dark and unapologetic.
There should have been horror rocking through me.
There wasn’t. Very little set me back on my heels.
I had imagined this ending more than once. Imagined driving a blade through her myself. Imagined the relief of knowing I didn’t have a snake at my back.
What I felt instead was something quieter.
Safe, we were safer without her.
Like a seam that had been stretched too far and had finally snapped shut.
Lucky barked a sharp laugh. “Holy fucking shitballs on ice. About fucking time.”
No one moved, not even Dave as he stared at the head of the woman who’d murdered his Egan.
Veyyr stood there, shoulders rising and falling once. Twice. His magic slowly settling back under his skin.
He lifted his eyes to mine.
And in that look was a question.
Are you afraid of me now?
I stepped forward, not away.
The blood soaked into the floor between us, but I closed the distance anyway, walking through it. I reached for his hand, brushing my fingers across his knuckles. I did not reach for the sword. I reached only for him.
“I would have done it,” I said.
The words were not accusation. Not comfort.
Confession and understanding.
His jaw tightened, something flickering there that looked dangerously like a softening.
“I know,” he answered.
The smell of blood was intense, as if Isla’s magic had somehow multiplied the scent—a final curse from the witch who just wouldn’t be ignored.
A gust of wind snapped across us, sweeping hard and fast to the east, and within moments my skin began to crawl with a warning that I couldn’t deny.
“There’s too much blood here, bleeders are on their way. We have to go. Now.”
Harrison didn’t hesitate, he grabbed a few supplies. Lucky stood and kept Rana tight in his arms. Neither waited for Veyyr to give them direction.
There wasn’t much else to take, anything off Isla would be drenched in her blood and we couldn’t risk it. “Sorrow, go with Rana.”
The big bird launched into the air and flew after Lucky, landing on the ogre’s shoulder before I lost sight of them.
“Dave.” I crouched and grabbed his arm. “We’ve got to go.”
“I…” Dave took something from Egan’s pocket, bent and kissed him on the lips.
My guts turned. I hadn’t known that they were lovers. Fuck. Not just a friend then, not even a close friend.
His mate. Isla had killed his mate.
I caught him in a quick, tight hug, holding him as I’d held Rana. “Gods, Dave. I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.”
His words were muffled against my shoulder. “Egan…never trusted new people. I tried to tell him you wouldn’t care.”
I wouldn’t have cared, but it was too late to tell Egan that now.
I helped him to his feet and pushed him in the direction of Lucky and Harrison. He paused, looking back to Egan’s body one more time, whispering his name. “Egan.”
“Dave, go.”
He turned and stumbled after the others, rushing through the dark corridors to where we’d left the vehicles parked.
I tipped the remaining pot of hot chocolate out onto the fire with the toe of my boot, the smoke turning black as it sizzled through the poison, the room darkening to mere shadows. If not for the sparks of light leaping off Veyyr, it would have been difficult to see.
He strode across the room toward me and I held my ground, the spear still in my hand. Despite understanding him, despite knowing it had to happen and it was not my fault I was not entirely sure he wouldn’t blame me on some level.
He stopped inches from me as if I didn’t hold a weapon that could pull his magic from him. Instead, his hand circled my throat, squeezing, forcing me to look up at him. “You have cost me a witch, and a good man.”
I glared up at him, whatever icy cold heat that had been there before doing its best to rise through my anger as his fingers squeezed and relaxed, his thumb pressing up into the soft underside of my jaw. Stroking.
Damn him for making me want something I shouldn’t, for somehow finding that balance of fight and fuck that I couldn’t deny.
Maybe Lucky was wrong, maybe I was part ogre.
I found my voice through the haze. “I cost you a traitor and her lacky. Which means you owe me.”
He huffed out a breath, the ozone around him intensifying, leaching onto my skin and making it pebble. Too close, he was too close and as he spoke his lips brushed against mine. “Your death wasn’t hers to take. Remember that.”
He dropped his hand, and was gone, as I shook off his chokehold on me and turned to follow. Only then did his words sink in. If my death wasn’t for her, then who was it for?
Him?
Was Veyyr keeping me close only so he could kill me at the right time?
What if the resurrection spell needed something a little more than ingredients?
What if it was a life for a life.
And who better to sacrifice than a person you hated from your past? A person you were keeping close with a mixture of heat and hatred?
Who indeed.