Page 229 of Season Warriors & Wolves

I took off my glove and rested the tip of my finger on it, feeling the heat of magic all over my spine before thrusting my hand entirely inside it and grabbing the Grand Maiden. Craft metal. Special, apparently, Snow had said when she had brought me to the Crafter that day.

Melanthe stood up quickly, the grimoire falling to the ground with a thud. Her jaw set tight and her smile turned to a snarl when I broke the chains binding Urinthia and pulled her out of it.

Melanthe’s following attack was useless. I faded back to where Penelope was standing, narrowly missing the hit.

She laughed, the sound so terrifying when it rolled and reverberated all around the hollow cave. “This war was long over. No matter what you do next.”

I grabbed the Grand Maiden and turned her to me. “Dishonour your daughter again and I will rip your heart out like she asked me to,” I said to her, tugging on the last of her chains. “Banish her. D’mora.”

Death in a human body.

A cruel craft.

One so powerful it took three Delcour to cast. Three prime Crafters.

Her eyes widened and she quickly glanced at the two young Crafters behind me before nodding.

Keres might be rowing too fast down the river of sorrows because my feet gave in and I collapsed to the ground, barely managing to hold myself up to watch Penelope, Urinthia and Aradia gather around Melanthe.

“Do you two know the words?” Urinthia asked carefully.

Both nodded and the Grand Maiden nodded along.

Melanthe let out a scathing cackle. “What on this god blessed land do you think you are doing?”

“Mother,” Urinthia chanted, spreading her arms wide and chains rose from under her feet to surround Melanthe’s veil.

“Sister,” Aradia continued, and more chains covered Melanthe under. Forgive me, she mouthed to her sister buried under them.

At last, Melanthe realised the cast of Craft they were summoning. “What sort of nonse—”

“Daughter,” Penelope said and Melanthe’s eyes went wide when more chains slid over the dome of her veil.

“No, no,” she murmured more to herself than anyone else, half still surrounded in her delusions of power and greed. “Three Delcour. You need three Delcour. You cannot take my magic, aunt. You cannot take my magic! Please, aunt, please!”

“By god they were given,” Urinthia called loudly, and a strong, unnatural wind blew inside the cave. “By god they will be taken. I call.”

“I call,” Penelope and Aradia repeated.

The call was twisted. The common tongue lacked many words spoken in Borsich to explain the D’mora cast.

Melanthe’s eyes rolled back, her bones bending and twisting until she dropped to the ground, convulsing while crimson-coloured shadows leaked from her mouth, floating and disappearing until there was only a shell of an old human left behind.

Her hair had turned white, her skin pale and her pale eyes half mad and half terrified. She raised them to me when I kneeled before her now fragile body and pulled a dagger out from my baldric. “I cannot lose,” she wheezed. “I cannot lose. My child. What of my child, please? My daughter, please, she will need me.”

“She will receive the punishment you’ve set her up for. We all have lost one way or another. Because of you,” I said, gripping her hair and reaching close so I could see the thin lines of her irises. “Look at me. Snow will want to know in detail how light faded from these eyes, so keep them on me.”

It was taught to me that a kill needed to be quick, painless. As I sliced my dagger over her throat, a part of me understood why Snow liked giving a slow death.

Urinthia turned to Penelope, cupping her face. “Lysander’s daughter?”

She nodded, clasping her hands. “Please, Visha needs you.”

The Grand Maiden’s brows creased. “My child needs me?”

The dagger dropped from my hand, clattering to the ground, my own body surrendering to the poison of black magic seeping inside my veins. “To help…her. Help…Snow.”

Chapter fifty-one