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“No, Father. There will be no surrender. You’re going to have to kill me if you want me to stop fighting against your broken rule.”
The sounds of the war behind us grew hazy as something akin to sadness washed over him.
“So be it,” hesaid with quiet resolve.
I didn’t feel the blade cut through me at first. As I lunged forward to tackle my father onto the marble and disarm him, the steel glinted. Only after I landed did the pain hit me.
My knees dropped to the ground with an echoing crack, and the trickle of blood from my wounds became an outright gush as my life force seeped onto the white tiles. With clenched teeth, I fought to steady my legs enough to stand.
His blade had cut straight through the muscle of my thigh, nicking an artery by the dizzying loss of blood. I didn’t want to die on my knees like the weak male everyone expected me to be, but neither could I force my sliced limb to cooperate.
My father took advantage and he hovered the blade against my neck in the next breath. Dark brows slashed over his unreadable eyes.
“I’m sorry, son, but this is the way it must be if we are to keep our people from extinction. Perhaps one day when we meet in the Beyond, you will understand the necessity of my actions tonight.”
“Unlikely,” I bit out as my eye shuttered, readying for the blow.
I felt the sharp sting of metal lift for a moment as he arced it above him, and I focused on an image of Jade—her bright, trusting emerald eyes glowing with acceptance and love from the safety of New Orleans.
“Get the fuck away from him!” she shouted, as if from my dreams.
A gust of magick cloyed at my throat, and a thud sounded above me.
Realizing I wasn’t yet dead, I cracked my eyes open at the sound of my father’s sharp inhalation of breath. My mate’s magick kept him bound to the window frame, but he struggled to free himself.
“I can’t hold the spell much longer, Alexei,” she warned, glancing from the amulet to the skyline. “We end this now.”
Hobbling to my feet, satisfaction suffused my senses as Jade and I stood together as a team, facing off against our shared enemy. Jade’s blood still pulsing through me hastened my healing drastically. At my approach, his struggles increased in violence.
“You can let him go,moj draga.”
Jade sent me a worried glance, but her magick was draining swiftly. After another beat, I felt the amulet’s magick die off and my father slumped against the wall.
“Fools.” He laughed gruffly. “Now you will die together for your insolence.”
He lunged forward to attack. I pressed my shoulder into his gut, flipping him onto the marble before lifting the Slovenian dagger he had gifted me on the night he murdered Vera.
The familiar clang of steel sounded deafening as my blade cut cleanly through his neck, spurting me with black blood.
It took only a second, but my breaths roared in my ears as I took in his head, now severed from his body. Jade’s fingers wound through mine, and her touch was the only thing keeping me afloat as I stared down at the male who had raised me and tormented me for nearly a century, now reduced to a mutilated body on the castle floors.
“Alexei!” Henry’s warning reached me at the same moment I felt the ray of sunlight dip above the mountains and into the open windows.
The vampires who surrendered to the Coven and demons fled back to safety within the castle, while the others, who refused to cow to the enemy, started to smoke.
On instinct alone, I lifted my father’s hand to remove the talisman ring before slipping it on my finger. It felt as momentous as a royal coronation.
Jade appeared pale, but pride gleamed in her silvery gaze. She looked around at the emptying ballroom, with only the spirits of my father’s victims remaining.
Liliane and Willa came to her side and gripped her hands. Together, they whispered the spell from the exorcism in the cemetery weeks ago, and the spirits fled into the rift opened to the Beyond.
From afar, I watched Vera approach the portal and felt my heart ache.
She turned to me and nodded, forgiveness in her eyes, before she turned to Jade with a small smile. “Free my sister too, spirit witch.”
Jade nodded. “I promise.”
As the portal closed, I sent one last look at my father’s corpse and dragged Jade through the castle halls. From the cigar room, I saw Seraphina with her parents. Mother and Mira emerged, completely untouched by the gruesome battle.
