I struggle against him, except even as I do, I’m inhaling Eogan’s scent of pine and honey mixed with smoke from the extinguished fire, and I am simultaneously yearning for him and disgusted. My fingers claw at his arms but he doesn’t seem to notice.
He just smirks and slides his hand up to my throat.
I stiffen and refuse to let him see in my expression how I’m bleeding at every single one of my heart seams. “Go ahead.”
His fingers constrict.
I gasp. Wheeze. And wait for the slow death of him shape-shifting into me even as my fingers try to tear chunks from his flesh.
His hand crushes harder into my neck, cutting off my air. My vision swims until I’m clawing and writhing and a cry has seeped up from my throat. Oh hulls I can’t breathe. I knee him in the thigh, but he doesn’t even flinch. Then I’m gasping, flailing, dying.
Just as my legs give way and my vision starts to blacken, he relents and I drop to the floor.
“Like taming a pet,” he snarls. He flips around and strides to the door and opens it to a rush of music from the Great Hall that drowns out the shouts from the partygoers in the Castle courtyard. “Don’t be late to the banquet. I’d like to think you’ll especially enjoy my toast praising your help in destroying Odion and handing me Bron’s throne.”
The door shuts without him looking back, sending a parting chill of horror to settle over me.
I stare at the cracked, silver-plated wood as the realization emerges . . .
I have saved the world only to lose the most beautiful pieces of my soul: Colin. Breck.
Eogan.
CHAPTER 2
I GLARE AT THE CLOSED DOOR, SIMULTANEOUSLY holding my throat while cursing that illegitimate bolcrane offspring to come back.
I can’t stop shaking. Exhale. Inhale. His scent is everywhere, piercing my nostrils, digging down my throat until I’m gagging on smoke and pulling myself up to scramble around the broken glass and ice. No no no no no! I lunge for the charred window and push my face out into the night air. The noise below is deafening—as if my erratic weather bursts only encouraged the people’s frenzy.
I concentrate on breathing. Another inhale to clear my burning throat.
My body sways heavily and shakes harder, and for a second I swear my veins seize up.
I frown at my arms. What did he do to me?
“Focus on the atmosphere, Nym,” I can almost hear Eogan whisper. “It’s yours to control.”
I shut my eyes and lean in, yearning to feel him against my achy skin and chest cavity where, until a few minutes ago, my world existed. “I can’t focus,” I whisper. I don’t want to focus.
“Nym.”
No! I can’t do this without you.
But the moment slows anyway.
“Focus on the atmosphere.”
I grit my teeth and open my eyes.
Fine.
I shove my hand toward the sky.
Not even a breath of wind stirs as the golden candle bulbs rise into the now-perfect, starry heavens.
I try again. And again—this time with both hands. Then with my voice, begging the Elemental inside to waken and rise.
But it’s no use.
The curse I’ve spent my entire life abhorring—the thing I trained so hard to control with Eogan. No. Longer. Exists.
Just as Eogan no longer exists.
“Are you jesting?” A scream rushes my lungs and explodes from my lips, but it’s hollow and heartless, with no thunder to back it up. Like the voice of a powerless child, it drowns into the party noise below. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be!”
I turn back to my room, pick up the largest glass shards with my good hand, and hurl them at the walls, the fireplace, the door. How this happened I don’t know—I scarcely looked away from Eogan as he fought Draewulf at the Keep. Only a matter of moments. And afterward—when he was talking to his generals . . .
Litches.
His skin had looked sallow. Bruised. Bloody. With that incision behind his neck.
My stomach turns. The thought of Draewulf slicing him open while I stood feet away—of Eogan dying, his essence being absorbed by the monster wearing him like a shell of flesh . . . I fling a thick glass spike into the door. Then another, and another.
The last one thuds so hard it creates a crack across the overlay just as a knock sounds on the other side.
“Miss?” a man’s clipped voice calls through.
I pause.
“I’ve been asked to summon you to the banquet.”
What? I look around. Now? An awareness of what I’m supposed to be doing sinks in, as does the roomful of dissipating smoke and broken glass and the blood covering my palms that are somehow sliced like ribbons.
Oh kracken. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to do this. I bend over as my head spins, bringing bile up my throat. “Why didn’t you just kill me too?” I yell at Draewulf.
“Miss?”
“To hulls with your blasted banquet,” I snap loud enough for the man to hear. But I go ahead and dab my hands on my dress and step over to the washbasin to dunk them in case he barges in.