Darius yanked out the sword and lifted it overhead, intending to finish the job with a clean swipe—a quick and painless decapitation.
Butthisjob was mine, and there would be nothing quick or painless about it.
Thatwas a promise.
I glanced up at my vampire, our gazes locked in a fierce battle of wills. Logically, I knew it didn’t matter who killed Phillip, or any of our enemies, so long as it got done and we stopped their ultimate plans.
But I couldn’t let Darius take the man who’d murdered my mother. Who’d set our home on fire, trying to burn me down inside. Who’d shot the man I love with a devil’s trap his own twisted son had invented.
Darius read my thoughts, finally lowering his sword. “Whatever you need to do, Gray, make it quick.”
I nodded. My mouth was already full of hunter blood, but there was another whose blood I’d taste tonight. Another whose blood needed to be spilled by my hand.
I knelt down beside Phillip and sank my fangs into his neck, taking exactly what I needed—not a drop more.
Phillip choked and sputtered, his body failing.
“Are you afraid?” I asked him.
No response.
I leaned in close, whispering in his ear. “Good. You should be.” Then, glancing up at Darius, “I’ll be right back.”
* * *
The blue runes carved into the gates of the Shadowrealm pulsed brightly, its stone archway looming overhead. Here in my realm, the night sky was cloudless, glittering with stars.
It seemed fitting that he would die here—die by my hand, by my power. Die in a place he and all hunters feared—a place of a witch’s true power.
“Do it,” he hissed, kneeling before the rune gate, writhing beneath my grip on his shoulder. But his efforts were weak. He’d already lost too much blood. All he had now were his nasty words, his filthy lies.
He was going to choke on them.
“Do it!” he tried again, but I shook my head, a sense of rightness and calm washing over me.
This man, if I could even bring myself to call him that, had murdered my mother. I was also holding him at least partly accountable for Sophie’s death, considering that his passionate hatred of witches ultimately drove his son mad. Phillip’s torments had set Jonathan on a fruitless, lifelong quest to prove himself by any means necessary.
“You cut my mother’s throat,” I said plainly, “and you set our home on fire.”
“Your mother was the devil’s whore,” he spat, “just like you.”
Ignoring this, I said, “I watched her blood spill. I watched her bones turn to ash. I pissed myself waiting for you to come back and light me on fire next, but you never did.”
“That woman needed to burn, andyouwill, too. Maybe not tonight, but soon enough.”
“For more than a decade,” I continued, still calm, still serene, “I’ve seen that moment in my nightmares, in my waking hours, in the bitter darkness. It took me years to accept that it wasn’t my fault. That there was nothing I could’ve done to save her, just as there’s nothing I can do now to bring her back. But thereissomething I can do to get that image out of my mind—for a little while, at least.”
Phillip coughed up blood, but his eyes still burned with vicious hatred. “How do you plan to do that, sorceress?”
I smiled.
Then I removed the dagger from my boot, grabbed a fistful of his hair, and cut his throat. Not too deep. More of a nick, just like Ronan had shown me how to do. It was an art, really, getting it just right. Just deep enough to watch his artery pump out his blood, slow and steady, but not so deep he bled out too quickly.
I wanted him conscious for this.
Phillip growled at the fresh pain, his taunts quickly turning into moans of agony.
I took a step back, looking down on him and meeting his gaze.
