Whole, I would become not a conduit between them, but rather their master. There was no moving the Cauldron—it had to be now.
Realizing what I was about to do, Mor lunged for me with a curse.
Too slow.
I laid the second half of the Book atop the other.
A silent ripple of power hollowed out my ears, buckled my bones.
Then nothing.
From far away, Mor said, “We can’t risk—”
“Give her a minute,” Cassian cut her off.
I was the Book and the Cauldron and sound and silence.
I was a living river through which one flowed into the other, eddying and ebbing, over and over, a tide with no end or beginning.
The spell—the words—
I looked to the paper in my hand, but my eyes did not see, my lips did not move.
I was not a tool, not a pawn. I would not be a conduit, not be the lackey of these things—
I’d memorized the spell. I would say it, breathe it, think it—
From the pit of my memory the first word formed. I slogged toward it, reaching for that one word, that one word that would be a tether back into myself, into who I was—
Strong hands tugged me back, wrenching me away.
Murky light and moldy stone poured into me, the room spinning as I gasped down breath, finding Azriel shaking me, eyes so wide I could see the white around them. What had happened, what—
Steps sounded above. Azriel instantly shoved me behind him, bloodied blade lifting.
The movement cleared my head enough to feel something wet and warm trickle down my lip and chin. Blood—my nose had been bleeding.
But those steps grew louder, and my friends had their weapons angled as a handsome brown-haired male swaggered down the steps. Human—his ears were round. But his eyes …
I knew the color of those eyes. I’d stared at one, encased in crystal, for three months.
“Stupid fool,” he said to me.
“Jurian,” I breathed.
CHAPTER
63
I gauged the distance between my friends and Jurian, weighed my sword against the twin ones crossed over his back. Cassian took a step toward the descending warrior and snarled, “You.”
Jurian snickered. “Worked your way up the ranks, did you? Congratulations.”
I felt him sweep toward us. Like a ripple of night and wrath, Rhys appeared at my side. The Book was instantly gone, his movement so slick as he took it from me and tucked it into his own jacket that I barely registered it had happened.
But the moment that metal left my hands … Mother above, what had happened? I’d failed, failed so completely, been so pathetically overwhelmed by it—
“You look good, Jurian,” Rhys said, strolling to Cassian’s side—casually positioning himself between me and the ancient warrior. “For a corpse.”
“Last time I saw you,” Jurian sneered, “you were warming Amarantha’s sheets.”
“So you remember,” Rhysand mused, even as my rage flared. “Interesting.”
Jurian’s eyes sliced to Mor. “Where is Miryam?”
“She’s dead,” Mor said flatly. The lie that had been told for five hundred years. “She and Drakon drowned in the Erythrian Sea.” The impassive face of the princess of nightmares.
“Liar,” Jurian crooned. “You were always such a liar, Morrigan.”
Azriel growled, the sound unlike any I’d heard from him before.
Jurian ignored him, chest starting to heave. “Where did you take Miryam?”
“Away from you,” Mor breathed. “I took her to Prince Drakon. They were mated and married that night you slaughtered Clythia. And she never thought of you again.”
Wrath twisted his tan face. Jurian—hero of the human legions … who along the way had turned himself into a monster as awful as those he’d fought.
Rhys reached back to grab my hand. We’d seen enough. I gripped the rim of the Cauldron again, willing it to obey, to come with us. I braced for the wind and darkness.
