Chapter 83
SERENA
Time slows.
The entire world quiets until the only sound I hear is the roar of my own heart in my ears.
I blink.
No. No, no, no. This isn’t real. It can’t be.
But it is.
It’s Zadyn, not Kylian, lying there on the floor in a pool of his own blood.
Oh god, no.
Cold dread slams into me, taking me to my knees. Everything blurs. I’m suddenly fighting through a fog so thick and endless—dulling my senses, slowing my movements, slowing down the world itself. I’m moving in quicksand, and he’s bleeding out far too quickly.
I clamp my hands over the wound, trying to seal the blood inside his body. But it’s spilling out in droves.
A throbbing pain spears through my chest, as real and as raw as the time I pierced my own heart.
“Zadyn? Zadyn, stay with me.”
His hand fumbles for mine as a cluster of bodies cram through the door.
“Good gods,” Jace breathes.
My head reels, refusing to make sense of the nightmare unfolding before me.
“What did I do? What did I do?!”
“They’re retreating!” someone shouts from the hall. My eyes snap toward the door, then back to Zadyn, the realization clicking into place.
“I—called off the armies. For now.” A drop of blood leaks from his mouth. I brush it away through bleary eyes. “Serena.”
“Just—don’t talk. Just hold on, okay?” My voice betrays me, bordering on hysterical. “I’m going to fix it.”
I try to breathe around the stabbing pain, around the insurmountable fear clamping down on me. My eyes snap shut, a few tears escaping as I narrow all my energy into one single thought.
Heal him. Just heal him.
Adrenaline pumps through me as that piercing pain intensifies, tightening around my heart like a vice, winding tighter and tighter until I can barely breathe.
“Why aren’t you healing? What am I doing wrong? Zadyn? Zadyn! Help!” I screech over my shoulder at my horror-stricken friends.
No one moves.
“Why is there so much blood? Why can’t I—somebody help me!”
Zadyn’s eyes begin to roll back. A hand lands on my arm, but I brush it off it, shaking Zadyn’s shoulders.
His head drops to the side, caramel hair spilling into his eyes like it always does.
I clear it away, clutching his face, as if my iron grip is enough to keep him here, tethered to this earth with me.
“No, no, no. Stay awake, Zadyn. Zadyn? Zadyn!”
There is a roaring in my head. Or maybe I’m screaming. I’m not really sure.
His eyes go still on the ceiling as the last of his life drains out of him.
Silence echoes down the corridor linking our minds. I’m suddenly the only one standing there. I’m standing there alone in the darkness.
An empty stillness settles over the room, and I’m certain I’ve stopped breathing too.
“No. Wake up. Wake up,” I demand, shoving the stinging tears off my face with blood-soaked hands. I stifle my burgeoning anguish, sucking back the sobs lodged in my throat.
“Wake up. Wake up.”
The words become an incantation, falling from my tear-soaked lips. I give his face a few brisk pats. When that does nothing, I climb on top of him and start chest compressions.
One, two, three.
Breathe.
One, two, three.
Breathe.
Somewhere in my mind I know that CPR doesn’t work on fatal stab wounds to the heart. But I do it anyway.
Silly me.
“You’re not going,” I grit, bearing down on his open chest. “You’re not leaving me. Come. On. Zadyn.”
All logic, all sanity leaves me as I work like a woman possessed over his pale body, pumping his lifeless heart. My lips slam into his, pushing air down into lungs that refuse to fill.
Those lips that once kissed me soft enough to crack me open, those lips that once tasted like him…Now they taste like blood and tears.
“Serena.” Jace murmurs my name with unnerving gentleness. As if I’m in danger of shattering. His hands wrap around my arms. I whirl, heaving a violent shove to his chest, fire brimming in my eyes and heating my fingers.
The distraught faces of my friends stare at me, at us, with sympathetic eyes. “Why are you all looking at me like that? He’s fine. He’s gonna be fine.”
My hair falls into my eyes as I lift my fists and begin pounding his heart to no avail. But as I stare down into lifeless eyes, warm even in death, there is no denying that I’m sitting on top of a corpse.
I take in the blood now pooled around his outline—the blood dripping down my fingers. The cloying scent of salt and iron. The dull pallor of his skin. His colorless mouth.
And I fracture.
A banshee howl bursts from my throat as something in my chest tears. I rock back and forth, keening, every single cell inside of me aching with overwhelming grief.
Somewhere behind me, stone is crumbling, trees are bending. Furi is howling like a wounded wolf. Inside me, it’s like something pivotal has been severed. Something has burst. Something I cannot live without. I collapse on top of him, sobbing into his neck and clutching his hair.
He’s still warm.
“Please!” I scream, my chest heaving. “Please, no!”
I feel the absence of his arms around me like a gaping hole in my heart.
“Serena, he’s gone. I’m so sorry.” Jace tries to pry me away, and I resist, clinging to Zadyn with desperate need. “We didn’t know—this wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Slowly, I peel my face from Zadyn’s shoulder to peer up at Jace. “What wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“We only wanted to keep you safe here.” His eyes are filled with regret. With guilt.
“You...the two of you planned this?”
“I’m so—I’m so sorry—”
Jace’s words are cut off as I slam him into the wall, my fingers wrapping around his throat.
“HOW COULD YOU DO THIS? YOU FUCKING RUINED EVERYTHING!”
Utter rage devours me. Shadows spill out around me, serpentine tendrils lashing out to fill the tower.
Fire bubbles beneath my skin, piercing through the barrier as my grip on Jace’s neck constricts.
Before I can think to stop it, the room is on fire.
Someone curses, and in my periphery, Kai douses the flames with his water. But my focus is on Jace.
“Serena, stop! You’re going to kill him.” Kai rushes toward us, latching onto my arm. I burn him without even meaning to. He breaks away gasping, but it’s Mar’s voice that edges me back to reason.
“Stop it. You don’t want to do this, and you know that.”
Jace, for all his strength and power, all his prowess as a warrior, is no match for the boiling rage inside of me. The rage and adrenaline fueling my magic. His hands grasp at mine, and I see in his eyes that he is afraid.
For the first time, he is afraid of me.
He fucking should be.
I rip my hands away as the shadows clear, slinking back toward me. Jace falls to the floor gasping, clutching at his neck. He reaches for my legs, but I step back, crashing to my knees beside Zadyn.
Even in death he is heartbreakingly beautiful. I don’t know how anyone could ignore it. How I could have ignored it for so long.
I look down at myself. At my clothes, at my hands wet with his blood. The hands of a monster herself.
I did this. I killed him. I killed my familiar. My Zadyn.
Monster.
The room begins to spin. I can’t breathe. And what’s worse—I don’t want to.
Then Jace’s hands are pushing back my hair as he forces air down into my lungs. I try to resist, but he wins. Choiceless, I let his eyes ground me as he fills me with his gift.
Why couldn’t he just let me go? Let me suffocate? Without Zadyn, I’m dead anyway.
Then something occurs to me. Something Zadyn said to me a long time ago, when I first arrived in this world.
“I can bring him back,” I croak, pulling away from Jace. “He told me that some Blackbloods were necromancers. I can bring him back.”
I push the tears and snot from my face as my vision clears and my mind empties, focused solely on this one sliver of hope.
Mar sinks down beside me, laying a gentle hand on my shoulder.
“Serena,” she says softly, like she’s approaching a cornered animal. And I feel like one, ready to attack—to claw and fight and end. “Life and death magic is not easy. One mistake and he could come back…wrong.”
“I have to try. I can’t lose him. I won’t.”
“You cannot do this.”
A nasty hiss works its way up my throat as I pin her to the ground, snarling in her face. Dover is there in an instant, but Jace appears in front of him, pressing a cautionary hand to his chest.
“You will bring back something unnatural that you will have to kill all over again if you do this,” Mar says calmly, despite my assault.
“I have no choice. I can’t lose him.”
“You cannot do this alone,” she pleads.
“Then help me.” A loud sob severs my words. I try again, whispering, “Help me.”
“I don’t know how.” She hesitates for a moment. “But I know who might be able to.”
I fall back onto my heels, releasing her.
“Who?”
She sits up. “My coven.”