In the Wake of the Wicked (Veridian Empire #1)

75. Rose

75

Rose

T ime froze.

I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t move.

The hilt of the dagger protruded from Horace’s head. His body was suspended, a fierce expression still on his features.

He hadn’t even seen it coming. Had no time to prepare.

It happened faster than he could draw his next breath.

Bile crept up my throat, my body realizing the truth before my mind.

He couldn’t be dead. It was a trick. My loyal guard, my surly friend…he would be fine. I could heal him.

I drew in a sharp breath. Yes , I could heal him.

My limbs sprang into action, my feet carrying me across the floor as if I was gliding on air. The buzzing in my ears drowned out the noise of the room; I distantly saw Rissa and Lark’s silent screams, their faces red and contorted. I saw Gayl thrust his arm toward me, but whatever spell he cast, I felt nothing.

I felt nothing .

All I knew was I had to get to Horace.

I could save him.

Blood poured from his eye, thick and viscous. It covered his cheek, his chin, his neck, pooling on the ground where he lay. His other eye was glassy, unseeing.

I knelt at his side.

My blood thundered in my veins like a drum, harder and faster the closer it got to the surface of the cut in my hand. Begging to be freed.

In the back of my mind, Leo’s voice whispered, “ It will have a price, sweetheart .”

I nudged the warning away. It was just an injury. Just a simple healing. There may be a small price, but I could pay it. Nobody else would have to get hurt.

“ He’s not injured, Rose. He’s dead. You can’t heal that .”

No—no, he wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be dead. I couldn’t lose someone else, not again, not after everything?—

“ You have to let him go. Don’t be like him —don’t do something you can’t come back from. Do you remember what happened when Gayl brought back the dead? ”

I choked on a sob, my hands clenching at my side. Yes, I remembered—if Gayl hadn’t cast that fateful spell, I wouldn’t have Leo. Wasn’t that worth it?

I took in Horace’s body, the color already draining from his face, the blood flow already beginning to cease. I blinked back against the wave of denial, against the sorrow that sunk its teeth into me and dragged me under the surface.

He was dead.

A shadow approached my side.

“He was your friend, Rose, and for that I am sorry. But Horace?—”

I stood, catching Gayl’s injured wrist in my hand. He was so close I could see every wrinkle in his skin, every vein in his eyes. “Don’t you dare say his name,” I hissed, my words like venom as they slithered between us.

“Rose, move!” Lark shouted behind me. Instinctively, I dropped his arm and ducked, right as a long, feline form launched itself over my head and onto Gayl’s body. Sharp shards of shadows followed in the fox’s wake.

I wanted to scream, to tell them to stop, that Gayl would kill them in a heartbeat—but the two women had converged. Snarls echoed in the chamber as claws dug into Gayl’s flesh.

His guards lunged into action, weapons drawn and aimed at their backs. A shield charm was on the tip of my tongue when seconds later, all four guards, Rissa, Lark, and I were blasted off our feet. A sound like a clap of thunder bounced from wall to wall. My head pounded as I hit the stone and crumpled to the floor.

Gayl stood, fury in his eyes and blood dripping from claw marks on his cheeks and neck. His lips moved and the flesh began to knit itself together, the blood disappearing back into his body.

“For that,” he panted, glaring at Rissa and Lark, “you will die.”

He flicked his hand.

A sickening crunch filled the air.

My two friends fell to the floor. Rissa shifted back to her human form and clutched her ankle. I stifled a gasp when I saw sharp, white bone jutting from the skin. Nearby, Lark’s elbow bent at an unnatural angle, her face screwed in agony as finger by finger, the bones in her hand snapped.

Another crack split my eardrums, and Rissa’s shoulder hung limp.

Her scream…that scream would haunt my nightmares.

Another crack. And another. They kept coming, over and over. The sound was ingrained in my mind, the sight of their torture overwhelming, blinding.

I remembered the image of my father in front of our fireplace, his choked gurgling, blood gushing. The all-too familiar frenzy shivered up and down my spine, trying to take over—but I couldn’t retreat. Not again. Not now.

Everything went numb. My panic receded, and in its place was a steady resolve. I dusted off the cloak that once buried my emotions, the one Leo and my friends had helped me hide, the one that still kept the darkness of my past from view .

I spent too much time covering the depths of my pain. Locking away the trauma of my father, the loss of my mother, the resentment of my province. I’d thought anger and vengeance and pride made me strong. I’d thought getting close to others, letting them see the truth of what was beneath my surface, was weakness.

I took that cloak and shredded it.

Piece by piece, I collected every horrid image from the last month. Every dark memory. Ragnar, the second trial, Callista’s death, Chaz, Alaric’s body beneath my blade, Leo stuck behind the portal. Horace .

Instead of shrouding them under weathered layers, I used them. Molded them. And found that in my pain came courage. In my weakness came strength.

It was with that pain and weakness that I would end this. With my father’s help, I would end this.

I rose. Bloodcurdling screams and cracks of bone resounded in the chamber and in my mind as I faced Gayl once again. Each snap brought me a step closer. Each groan narrowed the space between us.

He stood within my grasp, not a single ounce of mercy in his eyes.

“Let them go,” I snarled.

With a light scoff, he said, “Ah, you must feel so vindicated. You have seen me as your villain all this time, and now you want to be the brave one, the good one, the one who saves them. Have you not learned, Rose, that people like you and me…we’re destined for greater things?”

“I never said I was good.” My jaw twitched as my fingers dug into the cut on my palm. “I just have to be better than you.”

Catching his outstretched hand, I swiftly yanked off his black glove, exposing beads of blood blooming at the end of each of his fingertips. He had installed some sort of sharp needle at the tips of the fabric, something that would allow him fresh blood in an instant. Constant pain, constant blades in his skin, all for the sake of his neverending magic .

“This,” I hissed, “is for my father.” I crushed his fingers into my bloodied palm, the mixing of our blood sending lightning up my arm.

I uttered the spell Leo and I had found. The one from my father’s Grimoire. My last chance, my last hope.

“ Dravenia. ”

Recognition raced across his features at the siphoning spell. “What have you done?” he whispered.

Finally. Fear .

“Making sure you and your curse will never hurt anyone again.”

A tremor wracked his body. Shockwaves rippled through me, one after another, like something was pulled, sucked, drained from his spirit and set loose. Power hung in the air, so thick I could see it swirling around us. Silver and gold whorls pulsing with each breath, carrying with it a strength of magic I couldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams.

Convulsing, he pulled away, his face growing paler by the second. “There is…always a price,” he choked, falling to his knees but still holding my gaze. “Can you pay this one, niece?”

He collapsed.

Before my eyes, his skin slowly turned gray and ashen. Wrinkles deepened as his entire body shriveled and shrank, as if the magic siphoned from him had also taken his life.

His head hit the ground. His body was a husk, an empty shell. Dead.

The screams stopped. I spared a quick glance to see Rissa and Lark on their backs, sweat dripping from their foreheads, but alive. Broken and battered, but breathing.

At my feet, something slithered across the dark floor. One small tendril of silver light, as thin as a snake, glided from Gayl’s form.

And then came another.

And another.

And hundreds .

My breath picked up speed as little silver snakes wormed their way from his body and—and toward me .

An instant later, heavy footsteps landed on the ground behind Rissa and Lark.

A weight lifted from my chest. “ Leo .”

Rissa’s cry of shock was drowned out by the pounding of my feet on the wood floor as I flung myself into his outstretched arms.

“Are you alright?” he asked frenziedly, scanning my body while his hands roamed my head and neck. His eyes fell to his sister behind me, and alarm like I’d never seen passed over his features. “What happened? What’s going on?” He tried to lurch toward her and Lark, but then saw the writhing mass of silver light still following me. “What is that ?”

As he asked, the first sliver slipped over my feet and sunk into my skin. It was cool and smooth at first, then searing. I gasped as blinding power tore through me like a savage storm.

But this wasn’t natural power. This wasn’t my power.

There is always a price .

I pushed away from Leo.

“I—I did it, Leo. I used the spell. I took away his magic,” I stammered, holding my arms out as the silvery beams surrounded me. My hair stood on its end, every muscle in my body quaking. “ All of it. And I think this is my price.”

At once, the remaining strands dove into my flesh, and I let the darkness take me.