The magic whispered inside me, hungry for his soul. I wondered if I’d rip it out of his throat again. If he evenhadhis soul anymore.
“It’salwaysbeen his,” I said. I wanted him to know this. Wanted it to be the last thing he heard. “Nothing you’ve ever done has been yours, and now you’re going to die knowing you lived your entire life as a shadow puppet.”
Gasping for air beneath me, Jonathan almost looked human. Almost regretful.
“Gray, I’m…” He stilled, his green grass eyes holding mine. He seemed to be searching for his words, and for a brief second, I actually thought he might apologize for all the things he’d done to me. To my mother. To Sophie. To everyone who wasn’t his father’s idea of perfect.
But that’s not how the world worked. Not everyone changed. Not everyone redeemed himself in the end.
I yanked the dagger from his side and pressed the tip to his throat. Magic swirled around the blade.
Cut his throat. Make it slow. Make him hurt.
For so long, I’d wanted to torture him. Make him pay for what he’d done to my family and friends. What he’d been doing for ten years.
But now, I just wanted it to be done.
“You know why I have to do this,” I whispered, an unexpected knot of emotion tightening my throat. “I’m sorry it had to be this way. I’m sorry for what you’ve been through. I hope you find peace.”
“I’mnotsorry,” he continued, his eyes blazing with new fire. “My father and uncles were right. Witches need to be eradicated. It’s the only way the rightful—”
I shoved the dagger through his throat.
In the end, I hadn’t needed magic to do it. Just will.
I got to my feet, waiting for his soul to slither out for the last time.
But there was only the white fog of his breath, thinning into nothing.
Jonathan Reese was dead.
I thought the moment would feel bigger somehow. More important. The closing of an epic story my life had been writing for a long, long time.
But it was just a moment, not so different from any other. Here, and then gone.
The air before me stirred, and a massive snowy owl appeared—one of Liam’s messengers. He was white with black spots and an all-white face, his piercing amber eyes looking right through me, pinning me in place.
He hovered over Jonathan’s body, watching me. Waiting.
He was magnificent. The sight of him brought tears to my eyes. I reached out to touch him, but in a swirl of snow and ice, he vanished.
I blinked the cold from my eyes. When I glanced down at the spot where Jonathan’s body had lain, all that remained was Sophie’s dagger, glistening in the bright red snow.
I crouched down to pick it up, but as soon as I touched it, the ground began to rumble.
Another earthquake?
I fell to my knees as a fissure split the snow, the sound like the most terrifying crack of thunder I’d ever heard.
And then the mountain crumbled.
Not an earthquake,I realized. An avalanche.
I sucked in a breath of icy air as the solid ground dropped out from under me. The world spun and blurred into white nothingness, and I tumbled backward, wind whipping my hair and stealing my breath, ice and snow slicing my skin. I squeezed my eyes shut as the sound of a thousand freight trains descended on me, and then I was flying.
Through the snow, through the air, through solid ice, I could no longer tell. I only knew that when I finally reached the bottom, no one would be there to catch my fall.
Twenty-Three
