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I shoved the thought aside. Yes, I’d tried over and over for weeks to reach my magic, and I’d failed every time, but who gave a damn about that? If I’d done something to help him, I needed to do it again.
But what the hell had I done?
I wrapped one hand around the diamond pendant, a hiss escaping me as the frigid surface burned my skin. Pressing my other palm to his chest, I closed my eyes and focused with everything I had on something, anything within me that maybe could bring him back to life.
“Please,” I whispered. “Oh, gods…”
I opened my eyes again.
Nothing. His chest barely moved, the breaths so faint I worried I only imagined them.
Exhaling sharply, I squeezed my eyes shut again and crushed my grip around the pendant. The stone bit at my palm like a blade.
“Please…” I urged.
Seconds ticked past. The pendant remained the same, cold but without any other change.
I didn’t open my eyes this time, trying desperately to focus harder. Because dammit, I wouldn’t lose him. I couldn’t. Even if he’d pushed me away over and over again. Even if he’d treated me like dirt only to turn around and call me his treluria. Even if the attraction I felt for him confused the hell out of me and made me question my own sense of self-preservation and sanity, I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to let him die.
Not when maybe, just maybe, I could do something to save him.
Ice shivered through my veins. Beneath my palm, his fur became colder.
“Yes,” I begged. “Live. Please, Ozias. Please live.”
The cold grew deeper. Harsher. I kept my eyes shut, focusing on him and not on how my entire body felt like it was freezing from the inside out, every second drawing me closer to when my strength would give out entirely. But I wouldn’t let it, because I wouldn’t fail him. Not now.
My sense of the clearing around us faded. Any awareness of daylight or the winter breeze did too. The whole world came down to his chest beneath my palm and my desperate entreaties for him to live.
I couldn’t feel my fingers any longer. Air puffed from my lungs, cold as the breath of winter itself past numb lips that felt like they were made of clay.
Whispers niggled at my consciousness.
I shook my head, trying to dispel them. The tiny motion made my muscles creak as if I’d been frozen solid.
The noise faded. Seconds ticked past, marked by the slow, dull thud of my heartbeat resounding in my head like a clock.
At the edge of hearing, the whispers returned, distant and unintelligible like a voice from a far-off room saying words I couldn’t quite hear.
I dug my fingers into Ozias’s fur, fighting to concentrate past the distraction. Maybe I was on the verge of losing consciousness. Maybe the voice was my own mind, throwing out last-ditch attempts to get me to stop.
But I wouldn’t. Not if it let Ozias live…
The noise grew louder, like the hiss of a wave rushing into the shore and then sweeping away.
Mirror, mirror…
Grunting with irritation, I kept my eyes closed, trying to ignore the voice. It was a woman’s. Somehow familiar too, though it didn’t sound like my stepmother or any of the witches I’d met on the other side of the Wild Lands.
Maybe it was the vampire trying to take control again.
Broken now it lies…
It didn’t feel like the vampire, though. That creature was buried so deep right now, I could barely even detect its impulses.
Bold are the Nine…
Really, it didn’t matter what this voice was. It was distracting me, and that made it a problem because if I stopped to listen to it now, I knew beyond a doubt I’d lose Ozias.
