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Lilita remained in my ear, shrieking, and I could have sworn she stood right next to me. But I never stoppedchanting.
Movement caught my eye to the princes contorting, their bodies stretching, bones cracking, skin splitting. Ash was by their side, hauling Leven toward the water. But his leg buckled under him, and he growled into thenight.
There was movement near the house. I glanced at the top of the steps and spotted a group of ten men, their shadows stretching out behind them. Who was that? My insides constricted. We didn’t need additionalcomplication.
Without a pause in my chant, I watched Ash get to his feet and shove his brothers, one at time, toward thetub.
“Bee! There she is! Save her.” The male’s voice rang in my ears… sofamiliar.
Leven exploded into a roar, then two others followed. Ash collapsed, his body stretching, elongating. His cries tore meapart.
My palms burned, and I stared down at the black threads twisting tight around my fingers, except where I’d cut myself earlier, the wound had healed and the lightest trickle of whitesparked.
“Bee!” The voice came again, but Lilita thrashed inside me as if I had swallowed a serpent that now battled forescape.
“I call upon the goddess of light. Cleanse me. Purifyme.”
The newcomers ran down the stairs. The glow from their flaming torches illuminated them. They wore the gray Terra guarduniforms.
Then their faces came into focus. The dicks who bullied Dad and… his face. The cropped hair.Tristan!
I shouldn’t have cared, but his presence left me twitching. No one knew I did magic, and here I was with glowing hands as if I’d been hit by lightning. But that wasn’t the problem at all. It was that I had my princes to save, not deal with an over-domineeringex.
“Bee,” Tristan yelled. “I’ve come to save you. I’ve thought hard about us, and I will change for you. Marryme.”
Stunned at first, I couldn’t believe he’d think that after coming to my rescue, I’d fall over myself to accept his proposal. Never happening, even if he was the last manalive.
“Go back home,” I cried out. Idiot would get himselfkilled.
The princes’ growls quaked through the air. Even in their warped half-bear forms, they shuddered. The end wasnear.
The curse would killthem.
“Beasts!” Tristan bellowed, taking a knife from his belt as she scanned the grounds with my four princes, deformed and fighting the curse. “Kill all thebeasts.”
Dread locked my gut, and my world faded in andout.
Darkness pressed in on me, stealing my vision. I kicked and punched, needing to escape Lilita’s hold. I slid back to reality, then back into the pits of the underworld in my mind. I caught flashes of the guards attacking thebears.
I screamed, my chest burning with anger, ready to explode. “Stop! Tristan,no!”
Bee!Lilita sang in myears.
I threw myself on hands and knees, remembering that Ash had dropped the knife. I patted the snowy ground as my vision seesawed back and forth. I found the rose mixture and scooped some into my mouth. The bitter taste was slippery and gross, but for those few moments, Lilita flinched to the recesses of mymind.
Something silver glinted up ahead, and I scrambled for the weapon. I snatched the knife and slashed the blade across my forearm. Swallowing past the sharp pain, I coated blood onto my hand still caked with the rosepaste.
“Cleanse me!” I cried out. “Eradicate Lilita. Purify theprinces.”
To my left, a guard hovered over a fallen Leven, gripping a knife. Coldness rocked me. Fire surged through me and gushed from my palm. The energy jutted outward, white and black sparks intertwined. They struck the guard in the chest, throwing him off-balance. He landed with a thud,convulsing.
The last tendrils of power drained and fizzled. Exhaustion had me teetering on the spot. But I was running out oftime.
I staggered up, and a darkness swept through me once again like a tsunami, swallowing my thoughts, myemotions.
Talin lunged and chomped on a guard’s arm. The man howled. But Tristan was coming up behind the prince. He leaped up and drove a punch at hisback.
Talin wailed andcollapsed.
