The agony is too sharp for me to form words anymore as the demon rips into my very soul, sucking out my lifeforce, my magic, the very fibers of who I am and what makes me me.
My gaze connects with Becks, still fighting against his bindings with everything that he has. I need him right now, more than ever. I need him to do what has to be done.
I need him to save me. It’s too much to ask, but he’s the only one who can.
I plead with him with my eyes to end me, to save me from a fate worse than death.
When he stops struggling and lets out a roar, a mournful bellow of pure grief and sadness, I know he understands.
Forty-One
BECKS
She wants me to kill her, but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it.
The thought tears through me harder than the demon’s magic ever could. Even now, its dark cords bite into my scales, into my wings, into my throat, holding me pinned to the ground as if I’m nothing more than a beast beneath its heel.
I strain anyway. Always.
Haven hangs suspended in the air before me by the same horrible magic like a broken star, her body arched as tendrils of darkness thread into her skin, into her chest, into places I can’t bear to look at for too long. Each pulse of the demon’s power makes her glow for a heartbeat and then dim, as if something vital is being pulled out of her piece by piece.
Her magic.
Her life.
Her soul.
My claws dig furrows into the hardened earth. I would rip this world apart if it meant reaching her.
The demon laughs softly, as if this is all some exquisite performance staged for my benefit.
“She burns beautifully,” it murmurs insidiously. “You should be proud.”
Haven’s gaze is still locked on mine through the pain, through the shadows, through the impossible distance between us. They’re glassy now, unfocused at the edges, but still her. Still Haven.
Still begging.
Not with words. She doesn’t have the breath for that anymore. She begs me the way she always has when the truth is too heavy to speak aloud: with her eyes. With the quiet, devastating trust that says she believes I’ll do what needs to be done, even if it destroys me.
If the demon finishes this . . . there won’t be anything left to save.
I know that. Creator help me, I know that.
If it takes the last of her magic, if it drains her dry, her soul will be bound to it, trapped inside that monstrous shadow for eternity. No afterlife. No peace. Just endless darkness, aware and suffering and alone.
Death would be mercy.
Death would be kinder than what waits for her now.
Fire coils tighter in my chest, responding to the truth like it always has. My fire has never been gentle. Never precise. It consumes. It ends things.
It would end her.
A broken sound rips from me, half roar, half plea. I thrash again, muscles screaming, wings straining uselessly against the magic pinning them at warped angles. Blood drips from my chest, hot and slick, but I barely feel it. All I feel is her.
Haven.
Her name burns through me, a silent plea I have no voice to give.
