So Verin allowed the last of the pigment from Elisabetta’s vial onto his tongue.
And the world transformed into a cosmos.
As the fight for his life ensued, he realised he would have to survive long enough to send a message.
Or his revelation would be lost forever.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Nicole
THE MINUTE NICOLE AND KYAN RETURNED TOHER FAMILY’SDublin hotel suite the next morning, Dylan lunged for them.
‘You liar!’ shouted her brother.
‘Hey!’ Nicole staggered back into Kyan’s chest. The others looked up from the sitting room behind him.
‘Did you even kill him? Did you know what he did?’ Dylan demanded. His nostrils flared, scenting the difference between them.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ Nicole asked, shoving at her brother’s chest. She’d never seen him this incensed.
‘What are you talking about?’ Kyan’s voice was dangerously calm.
‘Alexander,’ Dylan snarled. ‘He’s the Empyreal that killed our mother.’
Nicole’s mind wiped.
‘What?’ She’d been wondering who the Empyreal was the whole ride back, despite how blissed-out and dreamy she felt. That sensation was thinning out quickly now, though. This went againsteverythingthey knew about the oath swearing of 1902.
‘That’s not possible,’ Kyan said calmly. ‘I snapped his neck over a hundred years ago.’
Dylan didn’t let up an inch, but must have heard Kyan’s sincerity. ‘Are yousure?’
‘I know what it feels like to kill another of our kind.’ His words were low, and dark. ‘I didn’t forget that day, that feeling, for a long time.’
‘I Saw it, too,’ Bells said. ‘It was definitely him.’
‘Then how?’ Dylan asked, raking his hands through his hair as he stalked back into the living room area.
‘It must have been someone else.’ Nicole followed him deeper into the suite, trying to reassure them both.
‘There’s no way the Wake can bring people back from the dead. Right?’ Dylan asked.
None of them felt certain what the true reach of the Wakewas.
Not any more.
A realisation turned Nicole’s body so icy her fingers tingled. ‘The blood.’
She told them what they’d learned from the Druid girl: who she was to Kyan, that the Wake were Fomóiri and the blood they sought was the blood of the Morrígan. That it could be used to heal an Empyreal from the brink of death to complete a Fomóiri-killing transformation.
Her father went deathly still and his eyes closed, as if in resignation.
‘The Wake stole a vial of it from the Druids the day they killed them,’ Nicole continued, ‘and Mum thought it had great healing and transformative abilities. She – she was going to use it to kill one of them. Did you know?’ Nicole asked her father gently.
His throat worked as he met her gaze. ‘I knew she wanted to kill them herself, yes.’
‘It’s like the storybook,’ Bells whispered. ‘The Demon Gods and the Old Gods …’
