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“I can’t take your life, Jacob.” Isaiah looked to the ground dejectedly, his voice hollow. “Please. Don’t make me.”
Doubt shadowed the other man’s eyes for a halting moment before a silver dagger manifested in his palm. “Then I will do what I must.”
Jacob’s eyes fixated on Derikles half a moment before he raised his arm and hurled the dagger through the air. Rukia’s breath caught in her throat as the metal sped through the air toward where she stood with the others.
She felt Isaiah’s protective instincts surge radically in milliseconds that followed. Too far from them to intercept it manually, he made a split-second decision to protect his people—to redirect the threat. Arm outstretched, he telekinetically pulled the dagger toward him, the blade reversing back toward him at a speed that left Rukia gasping.
It left Isaiah open and exposed to the blade as it hurtled toward him instead.
In the milliseconds it took for Isaiah to realize he was in danger, Jacob had already teleported between him and the dagger.
Complete silence harkened around her until she heard Isaiah drag in a lungful of air. Focusing on the distraught Raeth, she followed his gaze to Jacob. The male stood unmoving only feet in front of him, his back toward his protégé.
“I’ve only ever kept one secret from you, son.” Jacob touched the handle of the silver dagger quivering in his sternum. “I’ve always had amerjha.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
AssoonasJacob’sfingers gripped around the dagger, the silver fled to reveal an obsidian black that was tinged with the faintest hint of violet. Jacob was world renowned for his masterful skill in item transfiguration, but Isaiah had never suspected the dagger that’d adorned Jacob’s mantle was anything other than what it appeared.
Isaiah gaped at him, aghast, until Jacob’s knees buckled beneath him. Unwilling to see the other man fall, he caught Jacob before he hit the ground.
Jacob’s mouth was filled with blood as he looked up at Isaiah with a heartbreaking smile. “Forgive me, Isaiah.”
An iron hand fisted around Isaiah’s heart, agony at Jacob’s pain and the inevitability of his impending death shredding him from the inside out.
“Jacob …”
Overcome with the emotion that lodged in his throat, he found he lacked the ability to continue speaking. When Jacob reached weakly for his sword, Isaiah retrieved it telekinetically and gently placed it atop Jacob’s chest so the male could die with his blade.
“Please—forgive me.”
“Seek the Light in peace, sovereign.” Isaiah met his eyes as he spoke the honorific he’d used for seven hundred years. “Rest well, warrior. My heart walks with you.”
The rust-colored ends of Jacob’s mouth turned up into a meek smile before the light fled from his eyes. Above his head, the orb returned Isaiah’s clan to his mind, along with the minds of the fifty who’d been Jacob’s.
As the new connections filtered into the existing network, Isaiah’s irises frosted ice white. It was a sign of the massive wave of psychic energy he was expending. Though their signatures were familiar, the direct connection to the members of his old clan was new, untested.
And something he’d never have willingly taken from Jacob.
The telepathic connections with the new members of his clan solidified on the surface of his mind, and he felt gratitude and stoic appreciation toward him through the bonds—underneath the wave of crushing grief at the loss of their former sovereign.
The tsunami of sorrow from their bonds hit him like a kick to the gut, making his arms wrap tighter around the now motionless figure in his arms.
He’d killed Jacob.
When Isaiah had telekinetically drawn the dagger toward him, Jacob had anticipated the move and intentionally stepped into the path of the reflected blade. Jacob’s blood was literally—and figuratively—on his hands.
“Isaiah?” Sia’s soft voice cut through the silence.
Vitriol curdled through his blood with such hostility that it erupted out of his throat without conscious volition. “Do not speak.”
He couldn’t bear to acknowledge that Sia had known of Jacob’s intentions and did nothing to thwart him. Had she been a second worth her salt, she’d immediately have contacted Isaiah when Jacob had started showing the signs of ennui.
Lowering his gaze to the man in his arms, he gingerly wrapped his fingers around the cold steel that was imbedded in Jacob’s sternum. Isaiah removed it with a single yank. With a thought, he teleported the bloodied blade to the armory in his home, to be dealt with later.
Closing his eyes to calm the monster raging under his skin, Isaiah drew in a steadying breath. “Sia, you and Caiaphas will take Jacob’s body back to Carath where you will await my word.”
There was a pregnant pause between his words and Sia’s response. The female Raeth, sensing the volatility of Isaiah’s state of mind, approached him with measured steps, her eyes locked on him and his silent burden.
