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Her face was the last I saw before the world went dark.
CHAPTERFORTY-NINE
THE MEMORY THIEF
This wasn’t happening.It couldn’t be. I was lost in an illusion.
This. Wasn’t. Happening.
“Kase!” I screamed as his eyes rolled back in his head.
Valen dropped beside me, panicked as he checked the pulse point on Kase’s neck, as he scanned the pool of blood gathering around Kase’s middle. The king’s dark eyes locked on mine. There was disbelief in his gaze, but resignation too.
No. No. No.
“No!” I screamed at Valen. The ring scorched my skin. I clasped my hands to Kase’s cheeks. He didn’t respond, didn’t reach for me. “To the Otherworld and back. To the damn Otherworld!”
I pressed my brow to his. I made him a promise and I would keep it. Nothing mattered but keeping this man breathing. Not a war, not a bleeding crown. Nothing mattered but Kase Eriksson.
My throat grew raw from my screams. My desperation clawed at my desire to keep him alive, to hear him laugh when he thought no one was looking. I would kill a thousand men if I could wake to his crooked grin again. If I could fall asleep in his arms while we argued about what flavor of honey stick would be sweeter.
Disoriented and desperate, I cried out my rage and broken heart, holding onto Kase’s unmoving body. The courtyard spun in a whirlwind. Flashes of light speared the sky. Whispers of shadows curled around us.
Voices filled my head. Words of guidance, of acceptance for death.
“He’s mine!” I screamed. They couldn’t have him. Whatever lived in the Otherworld, gods, fate, monsters, they could not have him.
All at once, the spinning ceased. Darkness surrounded me like it had when I’d stepped into Valen’s mind.
“A fate kings and queens, nor thief or peasant can escape.” A woman—or a spectral of one—stood before me. Her skin translucent, her hair nothing but misty darkness. Her eyes were milky white. “His fate is mine.”
I licked my dry lips. The ring was nothing but a band of fire in the darkness. Painful, but the ache drew a constant thrum of power. I did not know if this was in my head, but if this was the fate of death, I would slit her throat if she took my husband from me too soon.
“It is not his fate.”
“His fate . . .” The misty woman tilted her head. “Or another.”
The hisses in the dark taunted me. They urged me to play the role of gods and choose who I deemed worthy to die. Who I cared so little about their life did not matter.
Flashes of faces I loved overtook my mind. Niklas laughed as he tossed some of his fiery elixirs. No. I couldn’t take Nik. Gunnar, next. He cheered on Eryka. I screamed as visions of their wretched deaths were offered up instead of Kase’s.
Cruel laughter etched through the folds of my mind like a disease spreading until hopelessness took hold. Death and violence found Hob, Herja, and Elise. Or perhaps I ought to pick Ash, Hanna. Maybe Hagen or Bard.
Folk I loved and cherished were offered up in a maddening swirl of blood and death. I clutched the sides of my head, silently begging her to take me instead. I screamed my frustration when the whisper of the horrid spectral continued to taunt me with her endless reminders that Kase was nearing his final breath.
His fate is mine.
I did not bend. I broke.
“Enough!” The ring roared in fire, lighting the shadows between us. The scorch of mesmer ignited in my veins. I schooled my gaze on the ghostly woman until the cruel whispers faded and angry screams replaced them.
She would not take him. She would forget his bleeding face until Kase Eriksson was an old, frail man ready to greet the gods.
Pressure knotted in my chest like dozens of fists pressed against my heart. I couldn’t hold the rush of mesmer another moment. Another scream scraped up my throat, and I flung my arms wide. A blast of darkness erupted from my palms, my chest, from what seemed to be every pore on my skin.
The cruel spectral was devoured by billows of shadows as furious wind gathered the night. Like serpents, the ribbons of shadows split in a dozen different directions through the haze of the courtyard. Time seemed to slow but for the darkness. Each slithering shadow sped around boots, bodies. They leapt over flipped tables and broken cobblestones.
Voices hissed in my ear. Demands I cease fighting our fate. I refused. Next, low hisses of threats, promises of pain filled my head. I buried every sound and shouted out a single reply, “You do not get to take him, you will take another.”
