Marcus’s gaze finds mine. His voice is steady, cold as steel, but his eyes are stripped bare in a way no one else would ever notice.
“Do you want to end him?”
The question hangs between us. Not just an offer. A reckoning.
I stare down at the man who shattered everything. Who tortured our families, who reveled in our grief and smiled while we bled. For so long, I dreamed of this moment. Dreamed of ripping out his throat, of watching the life drain from those smug, mocking eyes. I thought it would feel like victory. Like justice.
And yet… here he is. Pinned. Beaten. His body trembling, his arrogance stripped away. And instead of a monster, all I see is something small. Hollow. Empty.
My chest twists.
“I thought I would,” I say at last. My throat feels tight, my heart heavier with each syllable. “But he’s already defeated.”
I look at him, broken, hollow, nothing but a shadow of the terror he once was. The truth settles in my bones. “This revenge isn’t mine to take.”
The admission tastes strange, bitter and freeing all at once.
Victoria looks up at me, her face smeared with blood and ash, her expression cracking open. Gratitude glimmers in her eyes, fragile and fierce all at once, cutting through the ruin.
“Thank you,” she whispers, the words trembling but sure.
It pierces deeper than any blade because I know exactly what she’s thanking me for.
Then she turns back to her brother. “Death is too good for you,” she says, her voice low, steady, and final.
The words land heavier than any blade, and for the first time, Maximillian flinches. Not from pain, but from the truth of what waits for him.
She places her hands on either side of his face, fingers steady, unshaking, as if she’s done this a thousand times before. Maximillian’s eyes flare wide with fear.
Victoria leans in, so close her bloodstained lips nearly brush his ear, her voice dropping into a deadly murmur that makes my skin prickle.
“I’ll lock you inside your own mind,” she breathes, every word a papercut. “Let you rot in the pit of yourself.”
The horror that flashes across his face tells me he knows she can.
Then he screams. The sound rips through the hall, high and piercing, shredding the air until it feels like our eardrums might burst. His body convulses violently, thrashing beneath us, every muscle seizing as if trying to tear itself apart. We hold him down, unflinching, as his own mind turns inward and devours him piece by piece.
The screams unravel into ragged whimpers, then thin into faint, pitiful noises that barely scrape past his lips. His eyes glaze, unfocused, hollow. His limbs jerk once, twice, and then fall closed.
And then silence. Heavy. Absolute.
I release his arm slowly, fingers stiff from the strain. My chest heaves, every breath ragged, raw, as if my body hasn’t yet realized the battle is done.
But it is. The fight is over.
36
MARCUS
Itry hard not to wring my hands together, but I’m so damn nervous. Today is the day we’ve been working toward for weeks. Tears, heartbreak, blood, sweat—everything has led to this. And everything hinges on this potion, this spell.
I can’t fail. Not again.
It’s been two weeks of sleepless nights, endless labor, hope and fear tearing at each other in my chest. All of it funnels into this single moment. I don’t look at Esmerelda. I don’t want her to see the nerves in my eyes or the sheen of sweat on my upper lip. She doesn’t need that. She’s been my anchor these last two weeks, every word of encouragement carrying me further than I thought I could go. She’s the strongest woman I know. And I want to give her these last moments of hope, because if this fails, we’ll never get our families back.
The council’s best healers have stood with us. Their hands are blistered, voices hoarse from chanting, eyes bloodshot from formulas written and rewritten. And still, brewing the cure was only half the fight. The other half was finding the man who cast the spell in the first place.
We found him after three days, shackled in one of Maximillian’s dungeons. Hollow-eyed, skin so pale it was nearlytranslucent. It wasn’t the hunger or thirst that broke him when we freed him, it was the sunlight. Seeing daylight after being in the dark so long and never expecting to get out had him sobbing.