I advance, ready to jump on the other side of Abra and tear her throat out, but then she hisses, “Tell me, Nox. How’s your sister?”
Nox’s expression falters, just for a moment, but it’s long enough for Abra to gain control, steer the dagger back toward his chest.
No.
I drop to my feet, scaling the rafter from below until I’m at Abra’s back. I dig my nails into her shoulders, baring my teeth, ready to rip out her throat, when she says, “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
I freeze.
Abra tsks, even as Nox’s face warps in pain. “That was the price you paid to get back to your little servant girl. Tell me, Nox. Is she worth it?”
Evander’s voice echoes in my mind. Tell me it was worth it, Blaise.
No. I glance at Nox for confirmation, but he’s not looking at me. Like he’s refusing to.
“Oh. Oh,” Abra says, a cackling delight escaping her throat. “It wasn’t Farin, was it? Tell me it wasn’t Farin who killed her. Because if it was, then we all know what that would mean.”
No. No, no, no.
“Remind me, now. It was you who sent Farin into Zora’s world, wasn’t it, Blaise?”
My heart stops beating, and only now does Nox look at me.
And there’s enough ice in his eyes to speak the truth without a word.
My ribs crack at the look. My fault. My fault.
Zora, unprotected Zora, dead because of me.
Because I just couldn’t let Nox go like he asked.
It’s then that Nox and I make a mistake.
We take our attention off of Abra. One last betrayal. One last sabotaging of one another.
I don’t see the blow coming until it hits.
Well-aimed, not at my chest or neck as I expect, but at my ankles.
Abra steps forward, sending me off-balance.
My feet lose their grip on the rafter, and though my instincts have me scrambling for purchase, I’m still in so much shock from the news of Zora’s death that my fingers find nowhere to grip. I fall, my body barreling through two sets of eroded rafters before I finally grip onto a loose beam.
The warehouse is burning, melting under the heat of the vats that spilled during Nox and Abra’s fight below. The liquid sunlight and moonlight slink across the floor, moments away from colliding.
One glance down tells me there’s another vat directly below me.
A vat of swirling liquid sunlight.
I turn to swing myself up on the beam.
Something explodes.
Liquid sunlight and moonlight blast mingled into the air, a byproduct of their collision. The vat below also explodes, making the rafter on which I’ve gripped groan.
It falls, and me with it. I barely catch myself on another rafter below.
Liquid from the explosion slides down the metal beam, singeing my fingertips as I try to get a grip.
I scream, a burning pain biting at my hands.
The agony is surreal, blackening the edges of my vision, and it takes every ounce of self-control I have to hold on.
It hits me then that I am going to fall. The pain is causing the muscles in my arms to seize, and even my vampire instincts can’t guide me with the pain pounding in my skull.
It’s then I hear a voice, and this time, there’s no twinge of the parasite in it.
“Farin?” asks the queen—just the queen—peering up at Nox’s face. The one that should have held her son. The fate of her son must have pushed Abra hard enough to regain control of her body, even for just a moment.
“Farin’s gone,” says Nox, his voice trembling with cold triumph. “I made sure of that.”
Abra lets out a cry from above. It’s not the cry of a villain defeated, of a conqueror put to shame. It’s the scream of a mother who’s lost her child not once, but twice.
It’s then that I catch Nox’s gaze.
Everything goes still for a moment, like Time itself stops to watch the two of us.
He’s balancing on the rafter two levels above, Abra having just been sent to her knees by grief as she scrambles for purchase on the railing.
