Page 257 of The Edge of Darkness

“I love you too,” he whispered.

He clutched onto me like I was the final tether to this world.

“There’s so much that I have to tell you, so much that I want to show you.”

“I know.” His breaths came in a quick succession. “You can show me later.”

Later. As if this was all just a fever dream, and any minute now, we would wake to find ourselves back in our family home.

There was no “later.” There was no version of this that ended in me finally bringing him to the fae realm, or him meeting my husband, my mate. The only “later” we would have would be in the afterlife, and even that was something I would have to deny him.

The thought rattled me to my core.

“Please don’t leave me,” I whispered.

He blinked, his expression tightening as he worked up the strength to speak once more.

“Kill them,” he said, his voice little more than a flooded whisper. “Kill them all.”

The words were an iron sword that cut me to pieces, and yet, they forged a new path of resolve within me at the same time.

A slurry of blood slid from the corner of his mouth, and I quickly wiped it away, as if it would undo all that had just been done and somehow give him his life back.

He wasn’t the carpenter that I had said goodbye to that day when I left to go fight in the king’s tournament. Nor was he the steady figure that guided me through our younger years of training, always telling me how much I reminded him of our mother. No, in that moment, I saw him not as the adult that he was, but as my baby brother, always laughing and wearing a playful grin. Always crafting something out of mud with his hands. Always looking at me like I had hung the moon.

The eyes that stared back at me had gone distant, lifeless, glazed over with the remains of what was left unsaid between us.

His arms loosened, and the last bit of air that teetered on the edge of his lips fell with a sigh.

He didn’t draw another breath.

A curtain of red fell over my eyes as I trembled with rage. I wanted to beat myself bloody for not anticipating this. For not doing enough. But his death was not mine to carry. This was Killian. This was Lyceius. It was all the evil in the world that preyed on innocent lives.

And I would make them pay for it.

Strong hands bracketed my waist, offering to lift me up. I allowed them to. They steadied me, reminding me that there were still others here who were relying on me to keep it together and remain strong.

I looked over my shoulder and was met with Weston’s face. Pain and anger was set into the lines between his brow, and his longing for vengeance on my behalf was visible in the ticking pulses of his clenched jaw.

My power rumbled within me, but my light didn’t rise to the surface like I expected. A warning rang in the back of my mind, reminding me that the last time I’d been this emotionally stressed, my power had surfaced for the very first time—with ease, and without my consent. But I was too lost in the haze of anger and sorrow to sift through the mechanics of it now.

I finally turned and lifted my eyes to my brother’s killer.

Killian had lowered the bow he’d conjured, and was watching with earnestness, seeming to feed off my misery. The fury and the heartache that was written on my face only added to his depraved amusement.

“Sorry. I couldn’t resist,” he said through his smile. “What’s the saying? An eye for an eye?”

This fucking bastard. I had sliced his leg open for the entire royal court to see, and in return, he had taken all that I had left in Belthria. He would bleed a thousand times over for this.

“You just lost any chance you had at an agreement,” I snarled.

Killian rolled his eyes, but Skadi was not so quick to dismiss my threat.

The goddess’s smug countenance turned sour with fret. She swung her head to Killian. “You will mind your hand and your actions, or you will find yourself on your knees in the same predicament as them.” She jerked her chin at the lifeless bodies.

Killian held her stare with a challenge of his own as he concealed the bow within the magical space he’d drawn it from. “She had it coming.”

There was a burning in my chest. My heart was broken. And Killian’s words drove me deeper into the pit of my anger.