The others move at once, but it’s too late.
Ezra jerks his hand away from her, and something comes with it.
A black, writhing shape hangs suspended in his grip, no bigger than an eel, its body made of smoke. It thrashes violently, twisting around itself as though trying to escape Ezra and burrow back into Lori.
The air vibrates with a foul hiss as cracks spread through the dark worm, then it flakes apart into black ash and drifting wisps, dissolving into nothingness.
Lori slumps against the ground, her body going limp, like someone flipped a switch.
I rush to Ezra.
The green-tinted blade buried in his stomach freezes my blood.
Before I know it, my hands are digging it out of his stomach, and a frosty, desperate chill raises every hair on my body.
But Ezra smiles.
“Don’t cry, little fox. Maybe...maybe it’s better this way,” he says, his voice strained and labored and not at all like him.
“No. It’s not. It’s not. What are you saying? No.” I look desperately around at the gathered Fae. “Heal him. Please.”
No one moves.
Willow's face crumples. “We can’t. No one can.”
Ezra cups my cheek, and the world narrows until all I can see are his eyes. “Remember,” he whispers. “I chooseyou, Max. Every time.”
A ragged wheeze escapes his lungs, and his hollow gaze slips past me.
His pupils dilate.
The hand on my cheek goes slack.
No.
No, no, no.
No.
A shimmering blue light rises from his body, edging toward me, his blood sinking inside my palm. The cold aura of death beckons.
“No!” I crawl backwards several feet, away from him, away from Ezra’s soul.
“Who are you? Why does his soul respond to you?” Elio asks in a throaty, desperate drawl.
“Stop it, please,” I cry out.
My heart is broken. My spirit is in tatters. I don’t want to consume his soul like I unwittingly did with the others. I won’t.
Elio steps between Ezra’s soul and me. The ice of the reaper king tempers the flames slithering over my skin, and the sudden shift spooks the blue light, causing it to pause.
“I’m so sorry, brother. Truly.” He moves to catch the soul, but the light shoots down through a water hole carved in the stone and vanishes.
Elio frowns. “What the?—”
“Where did he go?” Lori asks, climbing unsteadily to her feet, echoing the howl in my own heart.
I wish I could burn her for what she did. Whoever it was.
