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Another set of footsteps sounded, running toward me, and I froze just as I was about to release my fatal hold on my body. Someone was returning after all.
But I couldn’t hold back my heart and lungs any longer. I might be a healer, but I still had limits. If my brain ceased to function, I wouldn’t be able to rescue myself. I had to act now, or—
“No!!” The heartrending cry was part grief, part horror, and part raging anger.
My blurry vision showed someone falling to his knees beside me. Hands reached out to touch my cold face, but they were familiar hands. I didn’t need to attack the body they belonged to.
Instead I turned inward, sending a spark of power to restart my heart. As soon as it was beating again, I let my fire spread out through me.
The effort took my whole attention as I restarted every function of my body. But dimly, somewhere in the back of my mind, I registered that Nik had let me go, that he had stood and left.
Usually, his departure left me feeling cold, but this time I felt a flood of warmth as my blood circulated through my body again, my lungs contracting in painful spasms as they sucked in air.
Slowly the fog in my mind lifted as my brain received the air it needed again. My thoughts cleared, and the remnants of my power easily restored the rest of my body to wholeness.
I was still coated in blood, my gown torn in many places, but underneath it, I was whole and well. Ember barked, jumping in her excitement, and nearly knocking me back down. Phoenix took off, however, apparently needing to spread his wings and feel the air beneath him in order to express his joy.
“But where’s Nik?” I asked Ember, my trembling hands stroking her fur. “I’m sure he was here. I heard him and saw him.”
Slowly my mind recreated the last image I had seen of him—the image I had been too far gone to process at the time.
In it, his face was dark and twisted, the grief raw and overlaid with seething rage. And he had been turning away from my body, stalking back toward the party.
Slowly I went cold again. I tried to get to my feet, but all of me was trembling now, and I couldn’t seem to find my balance.
Unwittingly, I had recreated Grey’s plan. He had intended to fake a death tonight, and I had done exactly that. But I had never meant Nik to see me.
I managed to find my feet at last, but all I could hear in my mind were Nik’s words from inside the ship’s hold, repeated again and again.I really don’t know what I’d do if someone killed you, Delphine…Someone might die at my hands…
I’d told him then that he should never become a monster, no matter what happened to me. But he’d retorted that without me, he had nothing to live for.
I wanted to believe his thinking had changed since then—he’d come a long way in processing his past, and his behavior in the market had showed how much lighter he felt. I wanted to believe he wouldn’t recklessly throw his life away or do something he could never come back from.
But I couldn’t shake off the glimpse I had seen of his burning eyes, stark in his pale face. There had been rage there, beyond anything I had ever felt. I wasn’t even sure he was in his right mind.
I stumbled forward, my steps slow and halting at first but then picking up speed. The sounds of the party had disappeared, but I didn’t want to think about what that meant. Surely everyone had just gone home—fleeing perhaps from the distant sounds of our fight. Or perhaps Grey had collected his people when he ran from Ignatius. I was sure he would have been reestablishing his own mesmerizations, even as the Constantines tried to implant theirs.
The garden stretched impossibly far, my feet taking too long to carry me to one of the open windows. As soon as I reached it, however, I wished the journey had been even longer.
When I had left, the room was alive with movement and voices. Now it was still and deserted. But not everyone had left.
Scattered across the floor were bodies. Bodies broken and bloodied, their eyes glassy and hearts no longer beating. Everywhere I looked were fallen stones and rent floorboards, all of them splashed with red.
Only one beating heart remained. I wanted to look away, to cover my eyes, but instead they were drawn inexorably to the one warm body left.
Nik. My Nik.
He knelt on one knee, his sword dripping red, and his other hand coated in it where it rested on Augustine’s neck.
“Nik.” It was a strangled whisper, a sound I hadn’t meant to make, but it was enough to catch his attention.
He looked up, his eyes meeting mine. Instantly his terrible expression changed, shock holding him immobile, only to be replaced with a radiant joy and relief that was out of place in this room of horrors.
I swallowed and forced myself to look around at the destruction before looking back at him. He followed my gaze, his eyes skimming over the bodies, and I saw the moment his emotions changed.
His expression twisted, filling with horror as if he was seeing his surroundings for the first time. He stood, starting toward me. His hand reached out for me as he called my name, his voice somehow twisted and tender at the same time.
I stepped back, stumbling away from him, and he instantly froze, his face twisting further.
