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She nearly latched onto my neck, but my magick jolted through her. Writhing on the ground, she glanced up as Alexei approached with the Slovenian dagger.
“Alexei, help!” she shouted.
Not sparing me a single look, he snarled, “Stand down, Sera, or youwilldie.”
His expensive suit looked as pristine as ever, while not a single hair looked out of place. Only the blood coating his blade belied his efforts in the war unfolding around us.
Over the sounds of the fight, he muttered, “You can join the others who have surrendered in the cigar room. Mira, Mariana, your mother. You don’t have to die like this, Sera.”
Her face transformed in rage.
“You’re mine, Alexei,” she sneered, the expression contorting her lovely face. “Let us kill the witch together and end this whole façade.”
Alexei shook his head, his eyes crimson. “The witch is mine, and I am hers. There would never be a union between us, Sera.”
She let out a screech of defiance, but Alexei moved faster than my eyes could track and brought her to her feet, his dagger at her neck.
“Stand down, Sera,” he encroached darkly.
I couldn’t watch this. Seeing the pair of them together, I could see how perfect the two vampires looked as a couple. Alexei may not want her, but she was what he needed—a vampire queen. An equal who could dedicate her entire life to him.
With my sisters and my Coven, I came with baggage that a vampire royal couldn’t afford.
The amulet’s magick latched onto me once more, possessing me until I couldn’t even recognize the vampires before me embraced in a deadly standoff. Instead of finishing them, I ran for the vampires attempting to flee the ballroom.
No one was escaping tonight alive.
Though the spirits couldn’t die again, Alistair and the vampire generals had corralled them into pockets around the room, the fading moonlight slowly draining the spirits of their energy.
A vampire's arms suddenly latched around me, and I lashed out with a surge of magick.
I heard a gasp and the creatures’ hands fell from my skin as he collapsed at my feet. Staring unblinkingly at the unfamiliar vampire, I lifted the sword for the killing blow.
“Jade,” the vampire gasped, his voice laden with pain as I held him immobile.
Something about his voice crept through the amulet’s defenses, but I held firm. My arms shook as I aimed the blade at his pale neck.
“Please,moj draga.”
My body jerked away from him, though my arms remained over my head in the prelude to violence. The Magician balanced between life and death. Distantly, I heard him speaking, the words slowly penetrating the widening gaps in my shield.
“I’m sorry for everything,” he whispered darkly, full of regret. “I’m sorry for not being the male you deserve. I’ll love you until I find myself in the Beyond, and even then, you will own the entirety of my heart.”
Moisture misted in my eyes before I could stop it, and my arms shook.
As if spelled, my hands dropped the sword, the sound clattering through the fog surrounding me. The dark magick wavered as another emotion filled me. The overwhelming sensation was far more pervasive and powerful than vengeance and sorrow. It filled me with an incandescent warmth that shattered every ounce of fear and self-hatred until only one emotion remained.
Love for my sisters, for my Coven, for my newfound friendships forged in Salem, and for the vampire before me, who only ever offered his heart on a velvet cushion, begging me to take any part of him I desired.
My throat clogged with realization. Alexei was mine, and I protected what belonged to me.
He watched me with coffee and crimson eyes as if I were Artemis herself, a goddess among men, rather than the witch who simply couldn’t exist in a world with any more of my loved ones taken from me.
I dropped to my knees beside him, my spell fully falling away from him. “Alexei.”
When he smiled, it glimmered as bright as the sun he would never see. He cupped my jaw, his thumb brushing over my cheek as delicate as a butterfly’s wings. “Moj draga. There you are.”
We leaned closer in an embrace that made the amulet pulsate around my neck.
