Chapter 22
Le Cri
CLAIRE
My name was shouted, echoing off the walls of the cavern. Then suddenly I was tackled to the ground, and the wind was knocked out of me.
When I finally caught my breath and processed what was going on, I realized I was in Bastien’s arms. My face hidden in the hollow of his throat. He opened our bond, and the all-consuming nature of being inside of it allowed me to take my first full breath since he left my side.
“Stop torturing me,” he whispered through it. “I almost lost you again.”
I buried my head in his shoulder. Wanting to cry but unable to make myself do it.
My thoughts turned to that warm field of light and the way I could see the girl’s hopes and dreams. I didn’t have words for what it was, only emotions.
They leaked from me, straight through our bond, until I was sure Bastien could see what I had seen. That he had felt what I had felt.
From outside our bond, I heard someone screaming, and it tugged my attention back to the world around us.
“What’s happening?” I asked, trying to move, but he just kept me caged in his arms. I asked again, louder this time. “What’s happening?”
“You don’t want to know.”
Then I heard Tansy sobbing uncontrollably, and I demanded to be let go.
He released me, and I clambered to my feet.
Breathless. Only to find Tansy clutching Devlinn’s body as black smoke smoldered from a wound in his chest. The spell had burned through his thick fur cloak, finding flesh and bone. He was struggling to breathe.
I remembered the graveyard. I remembered the wolf who took the curse for me.
The one who had saved my life. He’d died so that I could live.
And now, now, it was happening all over again.
Except it wasn’t just a wolf, it was a man.
One that I’d called a friend. One who had sacrificed his dreams of sitting on an island, sipping cocktails with the love of his life, to be here helping me fight for a belief.
My white wolf pushed her snout against my leg and whimpered. The brown wolf howled. Something in me broke open. I tipped my head back and screamed with a grief so sudden and complete that it tore from my chest and ripped through my throat.
When I was done, I realized I wasn’t giving up on him. Not without a fight. I crossed the chamber toward the girl, who shook in Tyson’s grip like a trapped bird. “Tell me the counter-curse!”
She shook her head, red hair clinging to her wet cheeks. “That spell rots men from the inside out,” she whispered. “There is no counter-curse.”
I whirled around. “There’s about to be.” I turned to Bastien, blood darkening his sleeve where a claw had torn him. Without asking, I dragged the horn across his wound and offered the demon what it wanted.
I could almost feel the horn purring with delight.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Fixing this.”
I raced over to where Devlinn lay on the ground and fell to my knees beside Tansy, whose hands were coated in a putrid black rot. It looked exactly like the oily liquid that came out of my mouth when I tried to commune with the demon whose power I had received.
With shaking hands, I pressed the horn into the center of the wound. Devlinn sucked in a choked breath.
“Claire! Stop!” Tansy gasped. “You’re hurting him!”
“If I don’t do something, he’s going to die!”
Weakly, she nodded. I called to the demonic power that lived inside me, and willed the horn to take the sickness from him, to drink it down and leave him whole. To obey me as it had with the spell on the door to these tunnels.
I was a powerful Dark Witch, and I’d fed him what it wanted. My pleasure. Bastien’s blood. I’d given it more than enough tonight.
With my eyes closed, I reached for the disease crawling through his veins and tried to draw it out.
I remembered the first time I met him at my prospective consort presentation.
And when he’d disrobed beside Tansy. I’d been so embarrassed and angry at Bastien for sending me someone like him.
But…Tansy had spoken up for him, and her love for this man, a Dark Witch that I would’ve otherwise written off as evil, had opened my heart to him.
And I was the better for it. This man, who was as funny as he was kind, came to the Lawless Lands for me. The magick flared in my chest, and I leaned into it. Drawing on the need to fix this. To save him.
“Keep going!” Tansy urged me on. “It’s working!”
I opened my eyes and saw the black rot retreating inward toward the horn, like spilled black ink being sucked back into the pot. Reversing time. Devlinn locked eyes with Tansy and reached for her cheek with a quivering hand. A smile formed on his lips. “You are beautiful,” he said weakly.
“And you’ve never been more handsome,” Tansy told him, holding his hand tight against her cheek. He choked out a sound that might’ve been a laugh.
Tears pricked in my eyes, and I didn’t stop them from coming as I refocused on what I was doing.
Pulling the disease from him. But just like the candles that I’d tried to light, I felt the power slipping from inside of me.
And when it did, the rot spread with terrifying speed, blooming across his chest, down his ribs, into places I could no longer reach.
“No! No! No!” Tansy sobbed.
Bastien crouched beside me and placed his hands on the horn too, offering whatever support he could. Whatever power he had. But it wasn’t enough. It slowed the rot just long enough for Devlinn to say one last thing.
“Find peace, my love.”
A line of black liquid trailed from between his pale lips, and I knew it was over. I stared at him, shaking, unable to believe this was real.
“You did everything you could,” Bastien said gently, setting a hand on my shoulder.
I did everything I knew how to do, and yet, it still wasn’t enough. This was all my fault. If I had just let Tyson grab the girl instead of trying to change her mind, Devlinn would be alive.
This horn, this magick, had failed me.
I ripped it from Devlinn’s chest and hurled it across the cavern with everything I had.
It struck the stone wall with a sharp, ringing crack, the sound echoing again and again like a broken bell, but it bounced off the wall and skidded back to me, inches from my hand, as if to say I wasn’t getting rid of it that easily.