“It’s me,” she finally said, the realization slamming straight into her chest. “It has to be me.”
The room fell silent, all of them looking up at her as if she’d finally lost it.
Hell, maybe she had. But they were out of time. Out of options.
Survival mode—engaged.
“Whathas to be you?” Gabriel asked, his green eyes fiery.
“We don’t need a heart, Prince. We don’t need another vampire. We just need me. I’m your plan B.”
“You?” The ground beneath her feet practically rumbled with the force of Gabriel’s ridiculous laughter. “I think the fucknot.”
“Now who’s being dismissive, Prince?”
“Jacinda, we’re not risking your life just to—”
“Just to what?” She paced the kitchen, anger simmering inside. “Save the people I care about? Break this curse before it breaks you?”
“Forget the curse,” Gabriel said. “We’ve lived with it for two hundred fifty years. We’re not fucking off just yet.”
“Look around you, Prince.” Jaci gestured at the table still littered with spent blood bags. “How much longer do you think you’ve got? Not another two centuries—I’ll tell you that much.”
“We’ll figure something out,” he said.
“That’s what this is. Me, figuring something else out.” She dropped into the chair next to him, taking his hands in hers. “I’m not giving up on this. On you. Just because we don’t have Renault’s heart doesn’t mean we can’t fix it. It just means it’s going to be a little more—”
“Dangerous,” Gabriel said, at the same time Aiden said, “Impossible.”
“Complicated,” Jaci said. “And, yeah, fine. Maybe a little dangerous, but when has thateverstopped anyone in this house?”
Gabriel sighed. “Jacinda, I appreciate what you’re saying, but—”
“One time,” she said, getting to her feet again. “Give me one time when any one of you turned your back on something just because it was dangerous. Or impossible for that matter. You’re fucking vampires! I’m a witch-demon hybrid freak. Our veryexistenceis supposed to be impossible, yet here we are,existing. So unless one of you can honestly tell me you’re ready to walk away from this fight without trying every crazy, impossible, risky, Hail Mary, suicide-mission idea we can conjure, I’m not ruling out adamnthing.”
Silence.
She’d rendered them speechless.
“The overall strategy hasn’t changed,” she continued. “We bind Viansa’s powers and trap her here, forcing her to confess the location of my father’s soul. Once I’ve rescued him, we can take her out for good.”
“She dies, her magic dies,” Charley said. “Her magic dies, the curse is broken.”
Jaci nodded. “The binding itself is the most important step. Originally, my theory was that a Redthorne heart—a heart tainted by the very curse my sister bound with her dark magic—was the key to counteracting that dark magic and stripping her powers.”
“A connection forged by a certain magic can also be broken by that same magic when that magic is intentionally altered for a different purpose,” Gabriel said, repeating the explanation she’d given him when she’d first confessed about the heart. “That’s what you said. Fight like with like.”
“Exactly.”
“But we don’t have the heart.” Gabriel scrubbed a hand over his face and groaned. “We’re going in bloody circles.”
“The curse inside you isn’t Viansa’s only dark creation,” Jaci said softly.
They all looked up at her again, and she lifted her eyebrows, waiting for them to put the pieces together.
“You don’t mean…” Gabriel closed his eyes, his voice dropping to a whisper. “When you said we just needyou, you meant that quite literally.”
“I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. I’m her dark creation, guys. Me. My very existence. Viansa calls me Lab Rat because that’s exactly what I am—her magical science project. The living, breathing result of her and my mother’s hell magic—the darkest power you can imagine.”
