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“They're overtaking us!” she shouted over the sound of fighting. “The Court must have snuck through the wards before the ritual renewed its power. But I don’t understand why—”
A shuddering pulse of magick surged around us as Liliane and the elders created a shielding spell to protect the witches on the beach.
“She’s dead!” a wail sobbed out from down the beach, sending a chill down my spine.
When I followed the sound, I discovered the body. Blood drained from a young witch’s pale neck, angled at an unnatural slant. My breath gasped out in panic as flashes of my parents’ and Rosalind Vasyliev’s murders stuck in my mind, so terribly like the macabre slice along the unfamiliar witch’s throat.
Tabitha descended the beach to help Genevieve and Sara hold off the vampires emerging from the woods while I stood frozen. Before I could process, my breath whooshed out of my lungs as fangs ripped along my neck, tearing at flesh, and I screamed out in pain and fury.
Like that night at the estate last year, I tried harder than ever to summon my spirit magick. I gritted my teeth and grabbed a handful of sand, throwing it in the vampire's eyes. He snarled and released his grip.
Distantly, I heard a hex slam against him from behind and he collapsed next to me, stunned. Gasping wildly, I turned onto my stomach, my fingers scrambling for purchase through the sharp rocks and grains of sand.
Failure.
I looked down at the fight still waging below, my confidence dwindling.
From my peripheral, I noticed the vampire who had started this war traipsing towards Liliane’s home, where I sent the children to hide. I sucked in a terrified breath and ran.
From my back pocket, I grabbed my phone, dialing Alexei’s number in a frenzy.
“Come on, come on,” I whined when he refused to answer.
Storming past Liliane’s open back door, I nearly toppled over the young girl from the beach, pressed against her other siblings. Several other children of witches and warlocks in the Coven shook and sobbed, but I forced myself to remain hard and detached.
“Y’all need to run upstairs and hide in the bedrooms. Lock the doors and do not open them for anyone except the Coven. Do you understand me?”
The oldest boy in the group nodded, though his face was sickly pale with fear.
“Good, now hurry upstairs,” I ordered sternly, my gaze shifting behind me intermittently. “No matter what you hear downstairs, stay in the bedrooms.”
I watched as they fled, feeling a small part of my body sag with relief. From the reflection of the microwave, I saw Trystan stalk through the back patio and turned to face him, my magick at the fore.
Trystan looked the same as he had that night in Bite nearly a month ago, though there was a maniac gleam in his dark crimson eyes that hadn’t been there before. My gaze carelessly tracked over his suit, halting at the golden staff clenched in his grip, the emerald stones glowing ominously.
“Jade Belle. Precisely who I’ve been looking for. It didn’t have to be this way,” he started, his movements aloof as he studied my ruby low-cut dress with disgust. “Alexei should have never dragged you into vampire business. Though, a powerful witch brought to her knees in subservience certainly sounds alluring.”
A shudder went through me as I calculated my best move.
“Did you drop to your knees and suck Alexei’s royal cock before or after I stole the Staff of Borislav, I wonder?” Trystan sneered, transforming his handsome face. “You certainly put on quite the show of pretending to hate him, but if I am to succeed the foolish prince in taking over the vampire throne, I need even more damning evidence of his treason that some stolen talismans. I needyou.”
I tensed and couldn’t hold back a snarling grimace. “I’m not surprised you’ve thought about Alexei and I. Desperation is not a charming look, Dubois. In fact, your envy for Alexei is downright embarrassing.”
“I care not about Alexei,” Trystan snarled, taking an aggressive step towards me. “When I discovered his allegiance turned towards the witches, I knew he was unworthy to possess the Vasyliev name. His whoring and insolence have only made him appear weaker than ever. But mating a witch? It’s abhorrent.”
My heart pounded at the wordmate, but I couldn’t afford to lose focus as I stealthily summoned a nearby floral arrangement as a weapon. “Your plan is a bit shortsighted, Trystan. How do you plan on using me to get back at Alexei, with an entire Coven protecting me?”
He grinned evilly and brandished the Staff of Borislav. “Because I’ve commanded my Court to not cease the bloodshed until every last witch is dead. It is my time to rule, and with this weapon, perhaps even Alistair Vasyliev with bend to my will.”
Even if the staff’s power was corrupted, some tendril of its original curse must remain. A single-minded determination filled me as I edged the flower pot closer. When his eyes shifted, I smashed the glass vase into his head.
His pained screams pierced my ears, but it was all the distraction I needed. I used the vines growing from ceramic pots on the windowsill and lassoed them around the staff, yanking it out of Trystan’s reach. It made a terrible clanging sound as it ricocheted against the hardwood, rolling beneath the kitchen table.
Trystan landed a fierce punch to the side of my head that would have surely crushed my skull had I not ducked a second earlier.
He shouted over the whirring in my head. “You may be a weak-willed swamp witch, but the talismans your people have created are just so… irresistible. It took me a while to figure out how to use the staff, but now I’ll be unstoppable.”
“Swamp witch?” I scoffed, shooting Trystan a pointed glare. “How un-fucking-original.”
