Chapter 44: Dead

The sound that erupted from the camp was a collective, primal roar of a thousand predators whose alpha had just been butchered. It vibrated through the soles of my sandals, shaking the bones of my legs.

I stood frozen in the firelight, a beacon in white silk stained with Vesper’s blood.

The second-in-command, the scarred warrior whose name I didn't even know, didn't hesitate. He moved instantly into lethal action. He lunged across the few feet separating us, his heavy bronze sword swinging in a decapitating arc.

Move! Hera shrieked in my skull, releasing her paralytic hold on my limbs just enough for self-preservation to kick in. Run, you fool, run back to the city!

I threw myself backward, tripping over the hem of my gown. The sword tip hissed through the air where my neck had been a second before, slicing a lock of my hair.

I scrambled backward on the sand, kicking up dust, as the warrior roared again and raised the blade for a downward thrust that would split my skull.

Adrenaline finally overrode the crippling guilt. I rolled to the side, scrambling to my feet, and bolted into the chaotic maze of tents.

Behind me, the camp dissolved into Bedlam. "KILL THE WITCH! TEAR HER APART!"

I ran blindly, my lungs burning with the dry desert air and the smoke of a hundred campfires. Arrows hissed past my ears, thwacking into tent poles. Men with faces contorted by rage poured out of every shadow, blocking paths, grabbing at my flying dress.

I tore free of one grasping hand, leaving a shred of expensive white silk behind. I ducked under a horse’s lead rope, dodging a spear thrust that grazed my ribs.

I was running through deep sand in sandals, weighted down by the agonizing knowledge that my mate was lying dead in that tent because of me.

Every step was a torture. Part of me wanted to stop, to kneel in the sand and let them take their vengeance. I deserved it. Vesper’s blood on my hands felt hotter than fire.

Don't you dare give up, Hera hissed, her presence a cold spike in my brain. If you die here, my plans die with you. Move!

I burst through a line of picketed horses, their terrified whinnies adding to the din. The open desert lay beyond, the path back to the Citadel. If I could just reach the darkness beyond the firelight...

A heavy weight slammed into my back, tackling me hard into the unforgiving ground. Air left my lungs in a whoosh of pain.

Rough hands grabbed my hair, yanking my head back until my neck screamed. I was hauled to my knees.

I looked up into a circle of furious faces illuminated by flickering torches. They were Vesper’s personal guards. The men who had respected him, loved him, and would have followed him into hell.

Now, they were looking at his murderer.

The circle parted, and the scarred second-in-command stepped through. His chest was heaving, his eyes filled with nothing but retribution.

He didn't speak. He simply raised his sword high with both hands. The firelight glinted off the bronze edge.

I didn't close my eyes. I looked straight at the blade, a strange, cold calm settling over me. This was justice. This was the end of the tragic loop.

I'm sorry, Vesper, I thought, the prayer meant for the man I had just killed, and the man currently locked in a cellar centuries in the future.

The sword came down.

Pain—white-hot and absolute—exploded through my chest, mirroring exactly where I had stabbed Vesper.

The world dissolved into red, then black. The sounds of the shouting army faded into a rushing roar in my ears.

I gasped, my body convulsing violently, choking on air that was suddenly cold and damp.

I wasn't on the desert sand. I was on hard-packed dirt. The smell of blood and smoke was gone, replaced by the musty scent of root vegetables and cold stone.

I was back in the root cellar.

I scrambled backward until my spine hit the rough stone wall, my breath coming in shallow, terrified pants. I looked down at myself. I was wearing jeans and a borrowed sweater. There was no blood on my hands. No obsidian dagger.

But the phantom pain in my chest, the echo of that sword stroke, throbbed with every heartbeat. And the emotional agony—the fresh, raw memory of feeling Vesper die at my hands—was suffocating.

"Did you see it?"

The voice was rough, broken, and terrifyingly close.

I looked up.

Vesper was crouched on the other side of the small cellar. The potion had worked. He had remembered.

He was staring at me, his body rigid, his hands clenched into fists in the dirt. His face was a mask of devastation, mirroring my own guilt.

But as I looked into his eyes, my heart stopped.

They weren't the beautiful green of the warlord who had loved me.

They were silver. Pure, predatory silver.

"You killed me! You were working for her!" He roared, the intensity of his voice plunging my heart into my guts.

The vision hadn't healed him. It had broken the last human thread holding him together. The wolf remembered being murdered by its mate, and it was looking at me not with love, but with intense hatred.

Vesper snarled, a sound that had no humanity left in it, and coiled his muscles to spring.