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WEDNESDAY MORNING
Veronica
Fucking hell. My arm hurt like a sonofabitch, and looking at it made my stomach churn. The venomous ooze—or whatever the fuck the neamh-mairbh secreted—had resisted my attempts to burn it away. It had eaten down to my bone, cutting through blackened skin that stunk something fierce.
I dragged my good arm across my forehead, wiping away sweat and other liquids I didn’t want to think about. The temperature had risen fast, although I was pretty sure that it was my internal heat.
What was with me and contracting crippling Community infections?
A blurred shape charged forward and slammed into me like a freight train. Then I was airborne. My butt hit the ground hard, my teeth smashing together painfully as I skidded back several feet, too stunned to move.
What the…
I blinked at the figure standing where I’d been only a moment before.
Xavier grimaced, his hands held to his chest where a thick, splintering wooden point protruded from his suit jacket. Several other spears were embedded in the ground around him, still quivering from the force of their landing.
Seriously, though, who wore a fucking suit to a war?
I mean, come on, it was—
As flecks of ash peeled off his skin and floated away, my mouth dropped open with realization. I scrambled to my feet and stared at him. “Did you just sacrifice your life for mine?”
He chuckled, then immediately winced and coughed, sending flurries of black ash fluttering from his mouth. “I’d hoped the spear would miss my second most valuable organ.”
This bloodsucking shitstain (thank you, Kit, for that lovely description) had the audacity to wink. He was decaying—literally dying, the official no-coming-back kind—and cracked a dick joke, then fucking winked.
What in the actual fuck was wrong with men?
“But why try to save me?” I asked between clenched teeth, pissed beyond reason.
I had wanted to kill him, not some random, well-aimed fae spear.
His light brown skin color faded to an ashy grey, cracks spreading over every visible inch like fractured glass. “Because you’re the only one who can do it.”
One of his ears crumbled to dust and spilled down his jacket.
Gross. “Do what, Xavier? You’re running out of time.”
His eyes, once a rich shade of brown, dimmed. “The only one who can stop Colin if—”
More of his body disintegrated, blowing away in the wind or piling on top of his expensive dress shoes.
Was he seriously going to fall apart before telling me what the fuck he meant? “If what?”
“…if they fail.”
His dying words caught in the wind and blew away, along with the rest of him.
The cool breeze swept across my sticky skin, bringing a hair-raising sense of foreboding. My injured arm throbbed harder as my pulse quickened.
I glanced up at the palace’s spires stretching high into the sky. There was no way they would fail. They couldn’t. Because that would mean the worst had happened to Angela and Thane.
And if they failed, then I would have nothing left to lose.
No one could stop me from demolishing this realm and decimating everything within it.
That was a promise.
