Page 57

With that, she turned, squared her shoulders, and walked away, her hair swinging. She left me in the alcove with broken cuffs and the unbearable weight of everything.

I couldn’t follow her. I just stared at the cuffs in my hand—their symbols etched in silver and catching the dim light like scars. Holy wards. A containment spell. A lie.

I thought I’d used them to protect her. But that was never true. I used them because I couldn’t bear to lose her again and didn’t trust her to stay. Didn’t trust myself.

I clenched the cuffs until the metal bit into my palm, drawing blood. She was right. What kind of angel feels such rage? What type of angel almost strikes the only thing he ever wanted to protect?

Not one worth the title.

The market bustled beyond the alley, unbothered, but I stayed where I was, drowning in the silence she’d left me with.

24. Cassia

I didn’t look back. I couldn’t. Each click of my boots on the damp Prague cobblestones was a hammer blow against the fragile wall I’d erected around my splintered heart. I walked away from the alley, from Remiel’s undoing, and from the sickening weight of the broken cuffs between us.

But the farther I walked, the more I left behind a raw, hollow ache. A bone-deep weariness from our confrontation took over—the lingering sting of his grip on my jaw and the haunting echo of that old name spoken aloud after centuries of silence.

He was broken. But I’d wanted him to break, hadn’t I? Wanted him to feel even a fraction of the pain he’d inflicted. Yet seeing him standing there, undone and steeped in a self-loathing so profound, hadn’t brought the vicious satisfaction I’d craved.

Tears pricked behind my eyes, hot and unwelcome. I turned a corner, leaving the oppressive shadows of the Forbidden Quarter behind. The raw ache in my chest—the fury, the shame—needed a target, a purpose, beyond him.

Lysanthe.

That name was a fresh stab. Every broken piece—the intel from the quarter, that horrifying glimpse in the warlock’s mirror, Valden’s poisoned address—was a trail of bloody breadcrumbs I could no longer ignore. If Remiel was gone, then I’d finally have the solitary freedom to pursue this grim task without his shadow lengthening mine. And I needed the truth, no matter how much it flayed what was left of my soul.

My shadows, sensing the shift in me, guided me through Prague’s labyrinthine underbelly, leading me toward a place few acknowledged and even fewer willingly sought. Not a human morgue. This was an older, deeper, and colder repository where Europe’s supernatural remains were stored. The entrance was an unassuming stone archway in a district that a century of soot and sorrow had tried to erase, warded against mortal eyes. Its air was thick with the chill of ages and the faint metallic tang of decay that was uniquely nonhuman. It smelled of cold iron, forgotten spells, and the final exhalations of people who should never have died—or perhaps never truly lived.

Inside, the air was colder still; the silence was heavy. The drip of unseen condensation broke the silence. Each drop fell like a slow, mournful tear on the flagstones.

This was no place of reverence. It was a meticulously organized cold storage for the cosmically unfortunate, a library of the damned.

A stoic gray-skinned creature with eyes like polished river stones, a specter tasked with this grim curatorship, greeted me with a silent nod. It understood my purpose without a word being exchanged. There was a grim, unspoken etiquette to these places of finality. No pleasantries. No lies. Only the stark business of the dead.

The creature led me through rows of refrigerated compartments, their heavy metal doors faintly gleaming with a sickly internal luminescence. “We have…several recent arrivals that fit the description you circulated to the lower quarter,” it rasped, its voice like dry leaves skittering over ancient ice.

My breath hitched. “Show me.”

The first drawer slid open with a protesting metallic groan that echoed too loudly in the vast chamber. It was a fae, her ethereal beauty grotesque and waxy in death. Her skin was like spoiled moonlight, her eyes wide and fixed with a terror that had outlasted her final breath. Her lips were parted as if in a silent scream.

A cold knot tightened in my stomach, a vise around my heart. Not Lysanthe. I shook my head once, a curt dismissal.

The second was a young witch, barely more than a girl. Her face was contorted in the final throes of some spell gone catastrophically wrong, sigils still faintly glowing like dying embers on her cooling skin.

Again, no.

My heart hammered a frantic, suffocating rhythm against my ribs with each drawer the specter opened. I saw a shifter caught horribly mid-transformation, its features a horrifying, twisted blend of beast and woman, fur matted with blood and claws extended in a final, futile defense. I saw a lesser demon whose horns had been brutally snapped, its face a mask of eternal, surprised agony. Each was a silent, gruesome tragedy. But none of them was my tragedy.

Another drawer pulled out, and time shattered. The air rushed out of my lungs in a silent, violent surge. The world narrowed to the cold, sterile slab before me.

Lysanthe.

Or what was left of her.

I remembered her vibrant, mischievous eyes. They had once danced with laughter and fierce loyalty. Now, they were dull and vacant, staring up at nothing. A film of opaque horror clouded them. Her dark unruly curls, which she always complained about but secretly loved, were matted with dried ichor and something that looked like the residue of terrible arcane experiments. Her skin, once so brilliant and alive, was a pale, bruised canvas marked by unspeakable violations—cuts, burns, and puncture wounds. Stark, brutal, and undeniable. She was a broken doll, a shattered relic.

And my dear Lysanthe was no more.

“Leave me,” I said, the words a choked whisper. I didn’t look at the specter. “Leave me alone with her.”