Page 256 of The Edge of Darkness

“This one means a lot to you.” Killian pinched my brother’s chin between his fingers, earning a pained grunt from him. “Your brother, am I right?”

A growl crawled up my throat. He had probably posed as the prince in order to apprehend Liam. Probably spun some lie, or took him by force. Either way, I would have his head for this.

“Yes, definitely your brother. I can tell by that rage you’re trying so hard to contain. Such a shame that he was all alone in the human realm.”

“Let him go,” I demanded, daring a step forward.

Killian’s expression shifted from pure malice to something contemplative, and I didn’t know which look I feared more.

Light flared to life in both of my palms. “Let. Him. Go.”

Killian lifted his blade, and my breathing stalled.

“All right,” he said, calmly—too calmly.

I watched him carefully, every heartbeat pounding against my chest and pulsing in my ears as he reached down and cut through the restraints that held Liam’s hands behind his back. When he shoved my brother forward, I forgot how to breathe.

There was no way he was doing this . . .

Liam stumbled, looking back at the woodland lord, completely confused, but Killian simply raised his brows as if to say, Go, before I change my mind.

Panic and desperation flooded my gut, but Liam was running toward me, and I lost all sense of discernment. I tripped over my own feet as I took a step, then another . . .

“Auren! NO!” I heard Weston cry out after me, but I couldn’t stop. My brother was right there—he was so close.

I wasn’t thinking straight.

I ran, closing the distance as quickly as I could, and slammed into him so hard that my teeth rattled. My arms flew around his neck, and I inhaled his familiar scent beneath the sweat and dirt that clung to him.

He squeezed me just as tightly. “I knew you would come,” he said.

I closed my eyes, feeling like I was finally whole again.

Then there was a thud. Liam’s body jolted against mine, then stiffened, and I felt something pierce the skin above my right breastbone.

My eyes snapped open and . . . there, across the clearing . . . Killian was lowering a bow.

The string was still quivering.

No . . .

Liam’s knees gave out, and his body weight took me down with him, breaking the tip of the arrow. His grip on me loosened, and I pulled away just enough to look down at where a small puncture mark had been left in my leather vest. The skin beneath burned, and so did the tears that stung my eyes as I lifted them and beheld the arrow that stuck out of Liam’s filthy, ragged shirt.

I stared in disbelief, and a shuddering gasp overtook me as the grim reality of what had just occurred poured over me like icy water.

His eyes were wild, full of fear, and his breaths were sharp, shaky, a testament to the very thing that I wanted to deny.

He was dying.

He lifted his arms, loosely palming mine with what little strength he had. “I got . . . your letter,” he rasped in between short gulps of air. “They told me . . . what you are . . . I knew there was something . . . something special about you . . . And I—” Blood spluttered from his mouth as he coughed and collapsed further to the ground, his eyelids fluttering.

“No, no, no! Look at me, Liam. Look at me!”

I shook him until his eyes opened again. They found mine and held, but the light in them was fading.

His mouth tilted up with a smile. “I’m so proud of you.”

A frantic sob broke from my throat, and something splintered in my heart beneath the burning in my chest. “I love you—Liam—I love you.”