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A sharp, burning pain lances through my abdomen. Not mine. Rory’s.

She screams.

Blood scented of wildflowers blooms in the air, and the growl that tears from my throat is thunderous. It’s a roar promising a slow, painful death for all who cross me and my mate.

“Vampires,” a guard shrieks as something heavy hits the floor above us. “They’re all vampires!”

“Well, fuck,” Carver says, grinning at the guard he’s spent the last ten minutes preoccupying. “This is going to hurt.”

He snaps his neck an instant later.

There’s a pregnant pause. Then—chaos.

Guards spill in from all the room’s entrances. Silver flashes in droves as we dodge and duck and fight our way toward the stairs. To Rory.

Risna and Eivor are at my back as I drive my fist into the sternum of another guard. Bodies fall around us, one by one, like a sickening game of dominoes.

I fly up the stairs, leaving bodies in my wake. Crushing windpipes and severing spines. Whatever is the quickest way to put them down as I bolt past. I slide to a stop at the landing just outside her bedroom. The door is wide open, and as I throw myself through the threshold, time seems to stand still.

Brutus.

The revolting guard from her memories. The one who took advantage of his role. Palming her ass without permission as she walked by or exited a carriage and peeping through keyholes as she bathed or dressed. Once she awoke in the dead of night to find him beside her bed, stroking himself.

Now, the bastard looms over her, the silver of his blade dripping crimson, as she cowers before him, clutching her stomach. He lifts his sword overhead, readying for a killing blow, and I’m paralyzed to the spot. Frozen in fear as her eyes find mine and she offers me a weak smile, as if she’s happy that the last thing she’ll ever see is me. And when she mouths those three little words I’ve yearned to hear my entire second life, the beast within me rips loose.

Chapter 37

RORY

Brutus is in pieces.

Blood drenches the walls, gore splatters the floor.

Seconds. No more than ten. That’s how long it took for Quill to tear Brutus to shreds.

My old guard had been delighting in the thrill of murdering me, readying his sword for a pitiless beheading, when Quill appeared in the threshold like a dark prince come to slay the villain, his gaze wild, his bloodlust an intoxicating tang in the air. The moment I saw him, an unfamiliar sense of peace washed over me. Even with Death nipping at my heels, I smiled at him. I’d go to my second grave with the knowledge this dark prince had been mine for a short while, and I would claw through the fabrics of space and time to make him mine again in my next life and the one after that.

Now, Quill’s an unchained beast before me, his indigo eyes the burning, deep cold of starlight.

And Brutus is in pieces.

Risna, Eivor, and Carver stumble into the room, slamming the door shut behind them and barricading it with furniture.

“That should buy us some time,” Eivor pants. He clutches his side, blood staining his fingers and weeping through his stolen uniform.

Risna fusses over him, and he swats her hands away.

“Black hell,” says Carver, turning to take in the rest of the room.

Risna and Eivor follow his gaze and shrink back from the pure violence Quill’s stance promises, from the destruction he wrought upon Brutus.

It’s Risna who says, “This looks scarily similar to…”

“What happened to Catalin,” finishes Eivor. “But the affliction⁠—”

“It’s not the affliction,” I say calmly, trying and failing to rise. The silver poisoning burns like the fires of hell. My guts threaten to spill out through the deep slash across my abdomen with every minor movement. I need Quill’s blood, but to drink from him now… “He thought I was going to die, and he just… snapped.” I reach for where I tucked the book into my waistband and fling it. Eivor catches it. “Take this back to the Shore of the Damned, and wait for us there. We’ll be right behind you.”

Carver’s expression is grim. “I don’t know, Rory. If we trigger the alarms, you’ll both have a matter of minutes before the barrier snaps into place and you’re trapped here.”