Rhys shouted her name, his voice a lifeline. He clamped her wrists, not to hold her down, but to hold her here.
Through the blur of black and ash, she saw them, saw clearly for the first time. His mother, her eyes swollen with weeping but alight now with recognition. Will, coughing weakly, small chest fluttering, but lifting his face toward her. Ned, humming through his fear, voice thin but alive.
The sight of them filled her, but so too did the pull. It wanted her. Catrin wanted her. She felt herself being stripped into threads, pulled through the dark.
Rhys’s voice broke over her. “Isabella, stay with me—please?—”
She wanted to. God, she wanted to.
She wished she had told him that she loved him. She wished?—
The dark swallowed her scream. Her body jerked. Pain, sharp and deep, flayed her, and she soared, floating high, her body crumpling to the floor below.
She heard the broken roar of Rhys’s pain, saw him fall to his knees at her side, and then darkness closed over her, deep as the grave.
Chapter Twenty-One
Isabella’s head tipped back, eyes rolling white.
“Isabella!” Her name tore out of Rhys, raw and useless. The pull fought him, talons hooked deep, raking her toward the dark. Terror scored oozing runnels in his soul. He had thought he understood pain, fear—fire melting his flesh, nights locked away in St. Jude’s, years listening to the whispers gnaw his bones, helpless to free those he loved.
But none of it touched this. To lose her was to be gutted, unmade.
Catrin rose, her form dripping black ooze that stank like rot, long hair oily and dark, her face an eyeless mass. Her laugh curdled into words. She opened. She called. She is mine now.
Rhys roared, the sound scraped from deep in his lungs, unholy and raw. Defiance melded with grief, hate with desperation. He hauled at the unseen tether until every muscle burned, and it did not matter. He could not wrench Isabella free.
But he would not let go.
“Take me,” he shouted. “If you want blood, take mine. Take me, Catrin. Leave her.”
You? she crooned. I’ll have you as well. But not before I hollow her out. She is the key. She is the door. She is the willing one.
Isabella’s lips moved, faint and soundless.
His heart lurched, savage and stunned. He had thought her gone, her soul already stripped away, her body but an empty shell. But she was still here, still fighting.
He bent close, caught the ghost of her breath against his jaw. The terror and grief that had hollowed him a heartbeat ago surged into wild, aching hope. He clasped her hands in his, bowing his head, willing his own strength into her veins.
And around them, the smell of rotting roses and smoke and ash grew stronger until it was more than just a stink in his nostrils but a taste burning his tongue, a burn eking through his pores.
“I…choose…” Isabella whispered.
Her eyes opened, black threaded with fire. Her fingers twitched in his grasp and then tightened, hard, answering his hold.
Catrin screamed, sharp and high. Soot bled down the walls in black ropes that writhed and twisted. Isabella arched in his arms, spine rigid, neck extended, the gate tearing through her as if she were hinge and threshold.
“Together,” he said, hoarse. “Always.” An oath. A prayer.
The dark recoiled as if seared.
Plaster split with a crack, long seams crawling jagged across the walls. Catrin ballooned and unraveled, her shape bleeding into every corner. One moment, she loomed vast, ceiling to floor, her gown dripping black ichor like blood, her face flickering through child, maiden, crone.
The next, she flattened thin, a smear of teeth and eyes that slithered toward them, the chamber itself her skin.
Door. Door. She is the door. Open, and all is mine. Her voice pricked his skin like shards of glass, tearing at his ears, gouging his thoughts.
He curled his body over Isabella like a shield as he felt the pull wrench through his arms. Her wrists burned beneath his palms. He braced her with both arms and still she slipped.
