For so long, Bogdan had been the architect of my reality. He’d ruled my life with the absolute certainty that he was unassailable, that my obedience was absolute, and that no force on earth could ever compel me to break the chains he’d forged around my soul. He believed I belonged to him entirely.
But in that stretching, breathless second, the truth struck him.
The shock fracturing his features was the last and only genuine gift he’d ever given me. It wasn’t given out of mercy or love, but wrung from him by the sheer force of my defiance. In those wide, dying eyes, I watched the realization dawn on him: he understood. I had finally broken his gravity. I had looked at his immortal power, looked at the terrifying eternity he offered, and I had deliberately, violently chosen something else over him. I had chosen Conrad. I had chosen the children.
I had chosen myself.
He tried to speak, but no words came. His body cracked first at the edges, darkness webbing through pale skin. Then he collapsed inward, ancient and beautiful and monstrous, the shape of him crumbling into ash before he even hit the floor.
Dust scattered across the marble and runner.
Silence crashed down after him.
I stood there with the empty stake still clenched in my shaking hand, blood dripping from my nose, my entire body trembling from the aftershock of breaking something I had thought eternal.
Then Conrad coughed.
I dropped the stake and turned. He was on the floor against the wall, one hand pressed to his throat, dazed but alive.
Alive.
I crossed the room so fast I nearly fell. “Conrad.”
He looked up at me, blinking like the world had not quite come back into focus. “Winnie?”
I dropped to my knees beside him and reached for his face, then stopped myself at the last second because I was shaking too badly and terrified of hurting him.
“Are you all right? Can you breathe? Did he break anything?”
His hand covered mine before I could pull away. So warm. So alive.
“I’m okay,” he rasped.
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m alive.”
My face crumpled before I could stop it. Conrad dragged me toward him with far more determination than his current physical state should have allowed, and I folded into him carefully, desperately, trying not to press against bruises while also unable to stop touching him.
When his arms wrapped around me, I broke. All at once, violently and without dignity, I started crying into his shoulder. Centuries of terror left through my eyes in a hot, humiliating mess.
Conrad held me anyway. “You did it,” he whispered against my hair.
“I almost didn’t.”
“But you did.”
I pulled back just enough to see his face. Bruised throat. Split lip. Eyes still unfocused. Beautiful. Human. Mine, if I was brave enough to say such a thing.
Then I kissed him. I meant it to be gentle. And it was—mostly. Soft and trembling and full of relief so intense it nearly hurt worse than fear had. His mouth moved against mine carefully, and even through his pain, his hand slid to the back of my neck as if he needed to make sure I was really there.
Billie screamed. CJ made a noise that sounded halfway between a sob and a battle cry.
Bianca said, “Oh, thank God,” in a tone so intensely adult it made me laugh directly into Conrad’s mouth.
I pulled away, crying and laughing, turning just in time as all three children to launch themselves at me. I barely had time to open my arms before they hit.
Billie first, naturally.
