Winifred limped the remaining distance and draped herself over her cousin. Miss Sorrow returned the embrace, causing Winifred to wince.
Be careful, dearest.
He would refrain from harming Miss Sorrow because Winifred cared for her, but if Miss Sorrow made any movements that might suggest Winifred was in danger, Marcus would sever the connection between the two women by any means necessary.
“Don’t do this, Fel,” Winifred said. “Marcus isn’t your enemy. Vincent attacked us. We had no choice.”
Miss Sorrow shuddered, then pulled away from Winifred until she faced both of them, the battle lines drawn.
“You can’t stay here, Winnie,” Miss Sorrow said. Tears dripped down her cheeks. “If you do, I’ll never see you again. Losing my brother was difficult enough. I told our uncle not to do it, but he insisted having a werewolf join our cause was the only way to rid the world of vampires. Vincent resisted, but you know Uncle Ethan. He pressured my brother until Vincent gave in.”
Winifred fell to her knees with a grunt. Marcus was at her side in an instant, supporting her with an arm around her waist.
“Choose,” Miss Sorrow said. “Him or me.”
Marcus felt Winifred’s decision. A moment later, Miss Sorrow must have realized it, too, because her lower lip trembled.
“We can find another way,” Marcus said. He held out his hand but must have startled Miss Sorrow, as she reacted by throwing out her arms. She smacked Winifred, who stumbled out of Marcus’s grasp. She pinwheeled her arms. He grabbed for her, but it was too late. Her knees hit the back of the ledge, and she fell backward through the broken window.
Chapter Thirty-Three
It’s not yourfault.
Winifred forced the words through the bond as the horrified expressions on Marcus’s and Felicity’s faces grew smaller by the second. Air rushed past her, tinged with the acrid stench of smoke. She was falling. Killed by her own cousin.
She wished she could relay the same message to Felicity. Her cousin had acted out of fear, not hatred. That made the betrayal easier to forgive.
She didn’t want to die with regrets.
The shock of the impact was so powerful that the air evaporated from her lungs, but it didn’t hurt. Maybe that meant she’d been spared and could still make things right with Felicity. She squirmed, but then a powerful throb of pain made her go limp. There was something pinning her in place. She moved her hands to her chest and wrapped her fingers around the narrow shaft of an iron fencepost.
A croaking sound that could have been laughter came out of her mouth. She’d been skewered, just like in the story Marcus had read to her days ago from his journal. History was repeating itself. She lifted her head but was immediately struck by a wave of dizziness that made her stomach gurgle.
“Winifred!”
That was Felicity. Her voice had the hollow softness of someone shouting from a distance. Winifred tried again to move, if for no other reason than to give her cousin some kind of sign that would keepFelicity from falling apart in the days and weeks to come, but her arms and legs no longer obeyed her commands. The best she could do was tilt her head back and forth.
There were other voices, then. She recognized Kitty and Marcus’s brother. Marcus was shouting something about fire. It took a few seconds, but then she understood; Marcus was sending them to help the village.
The golden rope in her mind pulsed, blinding her with its intensity. She closed her eyes and shied away from the light, but it smashed through her resistance and sunk its claws into her thoughts.
Hold on, dearest. I’m almost there.
The sick-sour taste of Marcus’s fear filled her mouth. She should’ve been with him, not tethered to a useless lump of flesh. She grabbed for the mental connection, thrashing violently until she wrenched free of her body and flowed through the bond. He was leaping down the steps of the tower three at a time. His hands and feet were numb and there was an awful rattling in his chest, but he didn’t slow down until he’d reached the ground floor. Only then did Winifred realize what was happening.
Marcus was caught in the grip of an attack.
She could feel his suffocating panic but was helpless to do anything but watch as he stood before the door to the garden, shaking like the last leaf on a branch in fall, unable to come to the aid of the woman he loved.
A fluttering sensation trickled through the tenuous thread that still tied her to her physical form. He loved her. She ached to hold him in her arms and tell him she felt the same, but her consciousness was fading. She could already feel her body calling her back, even as she stubbornly clung to Marcus.
His knees buckled. He fell but kept one hand clasped tightly around the knob. She could actually see the fear that kept him frozen in place. It was like a sticky, black cobweb clinging tohis thoughts. She burned with anger. Marcus did not deserve the suffering that was being thrust upon him. She opened her arms and willed the cobwebs to come to her.
Where she was going, pain was irrelevant.
The clinging tendrils resisted at first but eventually separated from Marcus and drifted to her. She gathered them up, compressed them into a ball, and let it sink into her essence until it vanished.
*
