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Connor hit his knees in front of me, gripped my forearms. I did the same, my fingers white from the strain. We’d have bruises tomorrow... if we survived this.
“Not a fucking chance,” Connor repeated, arms corded with effort, reading the fear in my face.
The air pressure suddenly changed, and the magic released me. Connor fell backward as the tension was released. Alexei stood up, offered me a hand. I took it and rose to my knees, and when I couldn’t avoid it any longer, looked back. Streaks of magic flashed, stuttered. And disappeared.
And when they did, they took the House with them.
***
Cadogan House was gone.
I don’t know how long I kneeled in grass damp with dew, hands shaking from magic and effort, breathing air that smelled of flame and demon, and trying to comprehend the fact that the House—and all its inhabitants—were simply... gone.
I stood up, pushed away the hands that tried to stop me, and walked to where the House had been. The shrubs that had edged the House were still there. The sidewalk still existed. But the House itself—the building—was gone. And in its place, in its footprint, was only darkness. A void of inky black. Not liquid. Not solid. Not smoke. Just... nothing. It wasabsence.
And she had made it happen.
I knew the flames hadn’t been real, that the House hadn’t really burned. But that was just mechanics. The House was gone, and with it our families: my mom and dad, Lulu’s parents, Connor’s parents. And every other person, vampire or otherwise, who had been in Cadogan House.
Rose had taken them away. And I was torn between absolute fury and sobbing grief.
I heard footsteps beside me and knew without looking it was Connor.
“I don’t know...” I said, trying to breathe through the band of fear that tightened my chest. “I don’t know what to do. Or what I could have done.”
Connor said nothing, and I looked at him, saw the same emotions in his eyes. Rage that someone had taken his family. Fear and grief about whether they’d survived.
Wordlessly, he turned and wrapped his arms around me—leaned against me, as if he needed someone to help shoulder the weight of his sorrow. It was doubly heartbreaking that, as a prince, he was so rarely able to ask for that help.
“I thought you were going with it,” he said.
“I didn’t,” I said. And felt momentarily guilty for wishing I had—that I’d gone with my parents. Because then they could tell me how to help them. “I didn’t,” I murmured again.
As if sensing my thought, my regret, his arms tightened. A refusal to let me go.
“I should have done something,” I said, tears slipping down my cheeks now. “But I don’t know what I could have done.”
“Nothing,” said Alexei behind us. He held Lulu in his arms.
We looked back. “What?” I asked.
“You could have done nothing. There are Ukrainian stories about the brimstone flames that don’t burn. And none of us had power enough to stop it.”
Lulu cried harder, and he whispered something into her ear; her pain and his compassion had my tears falling again. “They can’t be gone,” she said. “They can’t be.”
“Maybe they aren’t,” Alexei said. “A spell can always be undone. You will figure out a way.”
Connor looked down at me. “Can you feel them? Or the House?”
“I... don’t know,” I said. The air was thick with magic and emotions, and I wasn’t sure if I could separate them out. “I can try.”
He let me go and I stepped forward, putting a few feet of space between me and the others so I was clear of their magic. I closed my eyes, blew out a breath, and tried to center myself, to push away the distractions. The fear. The grief. The fury.
I made myself think of the House itself, of the buzz of magic and scent of gardenias, of the flowers that always waited on the table in the foyer. Of the old-book smell of the second-floor library. Of my mother’s perfume and the feel of curling up beside her to watch a movie. Of sitting in my father’s office, eating pizza. And, for better or worse, of the sword in the armory and the tendrils it seemed to stretch out to monster, drawing it near. Buteven monster went still now, offering me the quiet to reach out and feel what I could.
In the mental quiet, through a tunnel of darkness that led to a place I couldn’t see, I could feel the faint and familiar buzz. The magical heartbeat of my home, my family, and the vampires I’d grown up with.
They were alive, I thought, with gasping relief. But they were far away, their connection to me as faint as a whisper. And streaked across that thin connection was a smoky, bitter stain that was becoming all too familiar.
