Wings flap nearby, and somehow I know it’s my raven. Our connection is so new, I never even named my familiar. Now, I will never get the chance.
Hopefully, Gabriel will take care of it when I’m gone.
Hot, salty tears streak down my cheeks as I turn and fully look at the Hunter. Our newly sealed Mark thrums on my palm, a reminder of the words we spoke only yesterday.
“I’m sorry, Gabe.” The way he’s looking at me, the sorrow in his eyes, is enough to cleave my heart in two. “I love you, and I’m so sorry.”
Words have never hurt so much. It feels like I’m slicing open my skin, ripping out my own heart, and stomping all over it.
“Come along, Given. It’s time.” The king extends his hand towards me, and I am repulsed as I close the distance between us, lifting my fingers to place them in his.
Gabriel is moving, too.
“No!” The word is a lion’s roar as it tears out of him, and he reaches beneath his tunic, ripping off his amulet.
Too late, I realize what he’s about to do.
You know I’ll protect you, right?
His voice slides through my mind as I watch him shove my sisters aside. They stumble towards me, eyes wide, as Gabriel lifts the amulet. Marie and Violet collide with me, and the king shouts. I can’t hear his words, though—everything I have is focused on the amulet Gabriel is slamming into the ground at my feet.
“Gabe!” I scream, horror filling me as blue light erupts. It washes over me and my sisters, shoving us backwards. “No!”
No, no, no.
This is not right. This is not how things were meant to be. This is not how it was supposed to end.
But I can already feel the change in the air, the magic working as I’d intended it to. Toprotect.
A cry wrenches from my throat, raw and horrified and utterly too loud, as silence surrounds us. Panic squeezes me as the light falls away, and I’m sitting in a crater with my sisters.
“No!” I sob. “How could you do this?”
Everything hurts. My body, my mind, and my heart most of all. I am pain, and pain is me. There is no distinction.
A low, keening wail rolls through my chest as I raise my head and take in our surroundings.
The king is gone—but so is Gabriel. The stream, the forest, the clearing—they’ve all vanished.
Because the amulet didn’t shield the Hunter or save him from the king’s wrath. It didn’t protect him at all, because he took that magic, and he used it on me. He sent me and the twins away. To where, I’m not sure.
Does it even matter?
My chest constricts, my skin feels too tight, and every part of me feels like it’s burning. I look down, and blue flames have engulfed my body.
It doesn’t matter. The flames could consume me, devour me, eat me apart from the inside out and I wouldn’t care.
Because Gabriel—my Hunter, my partner, my mate—isgone.
I raise my head to the heavens, and then Iscream.
EPILOGUE
GABRIEL
Sometime later
The rattling of chains, incessant wails, and a chorus of screams surround me. They are the symphony of this place of pain and death, and they have been my companion since the king dumped me here.
