Page 69 of Peacemaker

Chapter Twenty-Two

Atonement

Clayton wasn’t waiting for me when I ran into Willow-Wisp—Amias was. I still hadn’t gotten used to him appearing in the daylight, even if it was only a possibility inside the mystical graveyard.

Relief spread through me when I saw him. I didn’t question it. I barely even thought about it. But it was there.

“Come.” He grabbed my hand and hurried me deeper into the graveyard.

“What happened, Amias?”

“He hoped to atone for his crimes, but he cannot cut away his mind.”

“What crimes?” I cried.

“You knew he was not the same.”

I had. I had known.

“But what happened?” I asked again.

He didn’t answer, just pulled me grimly on.

I heard Angus before I saw him. He lay on the ground as his beast, thrashing weakly, and Leo knelt as close as he dared, his face a mask of horror.

The giant held up his blood-drenched hands when he saw me. “What have I done?” he bellowed. He pointed at the crimson-stained item that lay beside him. “What have I done?”

Clayton stood a few yards away, silent, motionless.

I stepped on a bloody bone saw as I ran toward Angus. I stumbled to a halt, my hand over my mouth, unable to tear my stare away from the grisly tool.

A fucking bone saw.

“He couldn’t have known,” Clayton said, finally walking to me. “When he asked Leo to cut off the discolored halves of his horns, he couldn’t have known what it would do to him.” He met my stare. “Could he?”

“No,” I said, barely able to speak. “No.”

I dropped to my knees, not caring if Angus hurt me while in the throes of his mindless thrashing. His animalistic moans were constant and so very tortured, and I knew he was beyond hearing me.

I spoke anyway. I lay atop his huge, gleaming form and held on tightly, and I told him I loved him. I didn’t know what else to do.

He needed to know I was there.

As I buried my face against the roughness of his neck, Leo knelt beside us and told me what happened.

“He wanted me to cut off the changed horns,” Leo said, loud over Angus’s raw moans. “He planned to use them in the potion. I shouldn’t have agreed. I—”

I lifted my face. “This wasn’t your fault. And right now we just need to help him.” But none of us had a clue about how to do that.

His enormous, shifted body shuddered beneath me, trying to get away from the pain, one horn untouched and perfect—except for the discoloration he’d picked up in prison—and the other, injured one swollen and gushing blood.

It pulsed like a heartbeat, violently red, somehow soft looking, as though I could squeeze it and it would give like clay. Black lines like lightning ran from the base of the horn to streak over the bull’s enormous head, leaving crisped, cracked skin behind.

When I looked into his eyes I saw only endless, blind agony.

At that moment, he was not Angus. His shifter had taken over and he was simply a pitiful, beautiful animal in severe distress.

He moaned.