My throat tightened until swallowing hurt. I didn’t see this girl as a threat. I saw a girl who had been raised on hate, the way other children were raised on bread and milk. Fed it every day until it was all she knew. Hate for herself. Hate for anyone who was different. Hate for the people who made her mother so angry. You blamed them for every beating you took. You hated so deeply that it became your armor. Your air.

  And at the bottom of all her hate, I saw myself.

  Her fingers were wrapped so tight around her wand that her knuckles had gone white, the tendons in her wrist standing out like cords pulled too thin.

  She wasn’t pointing it because she wanted to hurt us. She was pointing it because she didn’t believe she had another choice. This must’ve been what I looked like to Shreesa the day she came to help me, and I threatened her with a fire poker. But Shreesa hadn’t attacked me. She’d tried to help me see the truth.

  And Bastien. Had this been how he’d seen me? Was this the look I’d given him when he’d shoved me against that bathhouse and I told him I blamed him for my awful, miserable life?

  Had I looked like this? Ready to burn down the one person trying to help me?

  “Get away!” she shouted.

  I didn’t hear a threat. I heard a cry for help.

  Tansy and I pushed past Okeri. She tried to block us with one arm, muttering something under her breath, but it was half-hearted. Even she knew two armed men looming over terrified children wasn’t going to help anything.

  Tyson stayed crouched, hands open, voice gentle. “Easy now. I’m not going to hurt you.” He gestured to the smaller children. “Something tells me you’re not playing hide-and-seek down here. Are you?”

  Despite being a vampire, Tyson wasn’t much older than the girl. But his easy smile did nothing to charm her. Nor the other children.

  “It’s alright. We’re like you,” I reassured her, removing the hood of my cloak so that my red hair spilled over my shoulder. I wanted them to see that we weren’t soldiers or hunters.

  They looked at me. Then at Tansy. And her moon-white braids and dark skin, and recoiled. I took Tansy’s hand as a show of goodwill. “We’re from the Unified Territories. Witches get along there.” A lie. But it wasn’t all-out warfare. “Just tell us what you’re hiding from, and we can protect you.”

  I could tell by the way she held her ground when the others cowered that she was fierce. “We’re hidin’ from her kind! The wolves.”

  Her kind. The words were spat like a curse, and I saw Tansy flinch as if struck, her shoulders curling in on themselves as she quickly turned away. A hot surge of anger and helplessness twisted in my chest. Devlinn rushed over and put his arm around her shoulders.

  “They just keep doing horrible things,” Tansy muttered. “And when I think they can’t do anything worse, they find a shovel and keep digging. Now they’re attacking children. Children.”

  “Look at me. Look at me,” Devlinn said, taking her face between his hands. “This is why we decided to stay. Because we don’t agree with this, and we’re not just going to let them speak for everybody. Are we? We’re not going to let them keep doing this.”

  I burned with the need to say something, anything that would lessen her pain, but the words stuck behind my teeth.

  I set my hand on Tansy’s shoulder, feeling her pain more deeply than I could explain.

  Tyson gave the girl one of his winning smiles. “We’re here to take care of those mean old wolves so you won’t have to hide from them anymore. So how about you put your wand down and let us help you?”

  The girl just shook her head. “They said the same thing. That we would be safe if we just listened. But it was all lies.”

  The word came out as a hiss. I knew her fear was fracturing into something more dangerous, but I didn’t want to believe she was too far gone. “We can help find your parents,” I said, trying to keep a hopeful note in my voice. “Are they down here too?”

  Her wand drifted toward Tansy. “The moon witches took ‘em.” Red light flashed in her eyes. “They’re all tricksters!”

  She swished her wand to cast the spell. “No!” Devlinn shouted, pushing Tansy behind him, protecting her with his body.

  I grabbed her wrist and lifted her wand toward the ceiling. The spell shot from the tip and ricocheted off the ceiling, nearly missing Devlinn by an inch.

  Tyson went to grab her, but magick flared under my skin, making my hand glow with light, and I shoved him back ten feet in the air like he was nothing more than a feather.

  People started shouting, but I stayed locked on the girl.

  Her lip was trembling. Tears were filling her eyes. She didn’t want to hurt anyone, but she was afraid. It was a fear I knew all too well. One that had been put there by stories of evil Dark Witches and merciless vampires. One that had been solidified by the blank eyes of dead relatives.

  “I know you’re afraid,” I said in as calm a voice as I could muster. “But we are here to help you. I swear it.”

  She drew in a shaky breath, and a single tear rolled down her cheek. “They killed my Ma. In cold blood. Right after they,” her voice broke off. She didn’t need to say the rest. I understood.

  I wanted to reach out to her. To hold her. To rock her in my arms. But she wasn’t ready for that kind of love. It was foreign. So instead, I validated her pain. “I’m so sorry. That should never have happened. Your Ma didn’t deserve that, and neither did you.”

  Someone shouted at me, but I didn’t move. I had to make her see. If I could understand, she could too.

  “Please, Mellie,” said the little girl crouched beside her. She couldn’t have been more than eight. “I want to go home.”

  “We can’t go home!” she shouted back. “There is no home.”

  When she looked back at me, the hurt had disappeared, and all that was left was anger. Tears formed in my own eyes. It was like looking into a mirror. There was nothing Shreesa could’ve said to change my mind when I was hiding under that chair. There was nothing Bastien could’ve said to convince me that he wasn’t evil.

  It was in his actions. And Tansy’s. And Devlinn’s. Day by day. It was seeing kindness from people I’d been told were evil.

  There was only one thing I could do to show her that we weren’t bad. And that was to ignore everyone who was trying to tell me to move and show her that I wasn’t afraid.

  She pointed her wand at the center of my chest, and the pressure dropped again.

  A warm, radiant light sparked in my chest that felt different from the insistent scratching of dark magick. It expanded until it touched the girl. Her eyes widened, as if she were being reminded of all the beautiful hopes and dreams she held. I pushed that light harder, expanding it out, knowing I could change her. I could make her see if she’d only reconnect with hope instead of despair, just like I’d done.

  But the harder I pushed, the more she pushed back, until the light rebounded and I stumbled backward. All the hope and light disappeared, leaving me with the empty sense that nothing I could do would save her. At least, not until she was ready.

  The moment before she fired the spell stretched on and on and on. I braced for death in the same way I waited for the back of Mama’s hand, wondering if everything would become quiet.

  Chapter 22

  Le Cri

  CLAIRE

  My name was shouted, echoing off the walls of the cavern. Then suddenly I was tackled to the ground, and the wind was knocked out of me.

  When I finally caught my breath and processed what was going on, I realized I was in Bastien’s arms. My face hidden in the hollow of his throat. He opened our bond, and the all-consuming nature of being inside of it allowed me to take my first full breath since he left my side.

  “Stop torturing me,” he whispered through it. “I almost lost you again.”

  I buried my head in his shoulder. Wanting to cry but unable to make myself do it. My thoughts turned to that warm field of light and the way I could see the girl’s hopes and dreams. I didn’t have words for what it was, only emotions. They leaked from me, straight through our bond, until I was sure Bastien could see what I had seen. That he had felt what I had felt.

  From outside our bond, I heard someone screaming, and it tugged my attention back to the world around us.

  “What’s happening?” I asked, trying to move, but he just kept me caged in his arms. I asked again, louder this time. “What’s happening?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  Then I heard Tansy sobbing uncontrollably, and I demanded to be let go. He released me, and I clambered to my feet. Breathless. Only to find Tansy clutching Devlinn’s body as black smoke smoldered from a wound in his chest. The spell had burned through his thick fur cloak, finding flesh and bone. He was struggling to breathe.

  I remembered the graveyard. I remembered the wolf who took the curse for me. The one who had saved my life. He’d died so that I could live. And now, now, it was happening all over again. Except it wasn’t just a wolf, it was a man. One that I’d called a friend. One who had sacrificed his dreams of sitting on an island, sipping cocktails with the love of his life, to be here helping me fight for a belief.

  My white wolf pushed her snout against my leg and whimpered. The brown wolf howled. Something in me broke open. I tipped my head back and screamed with a grief so sudden and complete that it tore from my chest and ripped through my throat.

  When I was done, I realized I wasn’t giving up on him. Not without a fight. I crossed the chamber toward the girl, who shook in Tyson’s grip like a trapped bird. “Tell me the counter-curse!”

  She shook her head, red hair clinging to her wet cheeks. “That spell rots men from the inside out,” she whispered. “There is no counter-curse.”

  I whirled around. “There’s about to be.” I turned to Bastien, blood darkening his sleeve where a claw had torn him. Without asking, I dragged the horn across his wound and offered the demon what it wanted.

  I could almost feel the horn purring with delight.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Fixing this.”

  I raced over to where Devlinn lay on the ground and fell to my knees beside Tansy, whose hands were coated in a putrid black rot. It looked exactly like the oily liquid that came out of my mouth when I tried to commune with the demon whose power I had received.

  With shaking hands, I pressed the horn into the center of the wound. Devlinn sucked in a choked breath.

  “Claire! Stop!” Tansy gasped. “You’re hurting him!”

  “If I don’t do something, he’s going to die!”

  Weakly, she nodded. I called to the demonic power that lived inside me, and willed the horn to take the sickness from him, to drink it down and leave him whole. To obey me as it had with the spell on the door to these tunnels.

  I was a powerful Dark Witch, and I’d fed him what it wanted. My pleasure. Bastien’s blood. I’d given it more than enough tonight.

  With my eyes closed, I reached for the disease crawling through his veins and tried to draw it out. I remembered the first time I met him at my prospective consort presentation. And when he’d disrobed beside Tansy. I’d been so embarrassed and angry at Bastien for sending me someone like him. But…Tansy had spoken up for him, and her love for this man, a Dark Witch that I would’ve otherwise written off as evil, had opened my heart to him.

  And I was the better for it. This man, who was as funny as he was kind, came to the Lawless Lands for me. The magick flared in my chest, and I leaned into it. Drawing on the need to fix this. To save him.

  “Keep going!” Tansy urged me on. “It’s working!”

  I opened my eyes and saw the black rot retreating inward toward the horn, like spilled black ink being sucked back into the pot. Reversing time. Devlinn locked eyes with Tansy and reached for her cheek with a quivering hand. A smile formed on his lips. “You are beautiful,” he said weakly.

  “And you’ve never been more handsome,” Tansy told him, holding his hand tight against her cheek. He choked out a sound that might’ve been a laugh.

  Tears pricked in my eyes, and I didn’t stop them from coming as I refocused on what I was doing. Pulling the disease from him. But just like the candles that I’d tried to light, I felt the power slipping from inside of me. And when it did, the rot spread with terrifying speed, blooming across his chest, down his ribs, into places I could no longer reach.

  “No! No! No!” Tansy sobbed.

  Bastien crouched beside me and placed his hands on the horn too, offering whatever support he could. Whatever power he had. But it wasn’t enough. It slowed the rot just long enough for Devlinn to say one last thing.

  “Find peace, my love.”

  A line of black liquid trailed from between his pale lips, and I knew it was over. I stared at him, shaking, unable to believe this was real.

  “You did everything you could,” Bastien said gently, setting a hand on my shoulder.

  I did everything I knew how to do, and yet, it still wasn’t enough. This was all my fault. If I had just let Tyson grab the girl instead of trying to change her mind, Devlinn would be alive.

  This horn, this magick, had failed me.

  I ripped it from Devlinn’s chest and hurled it across the cavern with everything I had. It struck the stone wall with a sharp, ringing crack, the sound echoing again and again like a broken bell, but it bounced off the wall and skidded back to me, inches from my hand, as if to say I wasn’t getting rid of it that easily.

  Chapter 23

  La Bête

  BASTIEN

  Ihad no idea what game Gorrath was playing. Did he truly believe that if he collected enough blood from me—enough pain, enough offerings—that he could free himself from his prison in the Underworld? But there was no time to consider what this all meant or to mourn the death of a good man. Because from the depths of the cavern, I heard sounds. Footsteps fast approaching. Heavy breaths. And the low rumble of a growl.

  Claws tapped lazily against the inside of my ribs. “Your wife. Your child. They need protection. They don’t need you. They need me.”

  The ruthless, angry thing inside me. The one that had torn through witches in that graveyard and felt nothing but relief afterward. He wanted out. I had an army to command, and that thing didn’t lead. I swallowed it like poison.

  “Lord Tyson,” I said, already drawing steel. My voice came out in the tone of a commander who did not have time to grieve the dead. “Give the prisoner to a guard. I need you with me.”

  Orders were easier than feelings. And if I stayed cold and detached, I could keep that thing inside me at bay. I’d fought in the Lawless Lands countless times. This was no different.

  Claire gave me a murderous look from where she sat on the ground beside Tansy, who was crying uncontrollably. “She’s just a scared girl. She didn’t want to do it.” She turned to Tansy. “I know she didn’t mean to do this.”

  “But she did,” Tansy sobbed. “She did.”

  Devlinn’s body lay between them, and I forced myself not to look.

  Irons were clamped around the girl’s wrists with a clank and a snap. Her wand was taken, tossed aside like a broken toy. She didn’t fight. Just stared through us with hollow eyes.

  “Get Tansy up,” I told my wife. Neither of them moved. “Trouble’s coming. We need to move.”

  “What? We can’t just leave him here,” Tansy choked out. “We have to take him with us.” She was clutching Devlinn’s cloak as if she held tight enough he might wake up. “Your Grace, please!”

  The footsteps were close. The growls, too. “Fall back!” My wife, however, wasn’t listening. She had her arms beneath Devlinn’s shoulders, trying to help Tansy lift him. Something in my chest seized so violently I almost barked at her to stop. I’d carried plenty of friends to the pyres once battles were done. Plenty. But his death hadn’t happened because of war. It had been so senseless.

  His head lolled to the side as they lifted him, and I was forced to look him in the face. He was so pale and lifeless. So unlike him. Black rot oozed from his mouth. The same oily blackness that Claire had thrown up.

  The rot. The disease. Gorrath couldn’t be on the mortal plane. I’d ensured that. But somehow his influence was seeping into the world again. I glanced around the cavern like I might find him standing among my warriors.

  But it was no use searching for ghosts.

  “Soldiers,” I snapped, already moving. Already pointing. “Help them.”

  Two men rushed forward, taking Devlinn’s weight from Claire and Tansy before they could protest. The relief that flickered across my wife’s face only made the guilt worse.

  I should’ve been the one carrying him. He’d died because I hadn’t done my job properly.

  Natalia burst through the dark with the warriors I’d sent to Chastity’s Stronghold. I was so relieved to see her face. To know she was alright. “Reform your lines! Weres!” she shouted. “Three of them!”

  I tucked the grief back inside my chest and told myself I had to lead these soldiers. I had to be their commander now in order to protect my wife.

  “You heard Lady Natalia! Reform your lines!” I commanded. My vision darkened at the edges as the change happened. The world stripped down to the things that mattered—heat signatures, heartbeats, the wet rush of blood through veins.

  And somewhere ahead, three new pulses moved through the dark.

  I planted myself in front of Claire. “Fall back with the others,” I told her. “Go with Sir Gavin.”

  “No! I have magick too. I can fight.”

  I gritted my teeth. If anyone else had spoken to me like that before a battle, I’d have barked them into place.