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The Thief of Souls laughs, even as blood seeps out of his wound. “You can’t kill me,” he says.

His face changes from that of the Green Man, earning another shriek from Mara. The queen didn’t even know the man she slept next to wasn’t her husband. Raven-dark hair and inky-black eyes replace the Green Man’s evergreen hair and amber irises.

“Want to know a secret?” he whispers. “Janus had a twin, a twin who died. The first time you met him, you were really meeting me.”

I reel back. Whether it’s from pain or blood loss, I can’t seem to put his words together.

He says, “Ask yourself this: Do the dead ever really die?”

I stare down at the monster who’s already ruined so many lives, feeling my own life force seep out of me.

He reaches for a lock of my hair. “Utterly singular…” he breathes. He smiles at me. “This is our little game—and trust me, enchantress, it’s far from over.”

A gust of wind sweeps through the forest, a dust devil rising around him.

“I’m still coming for you,” he promises me. “Your life is mine.”

Chapter 53

The Thief’s eyes close, his body going still.

It’s only once his life has fled him that his features revert to those of the Green Man.

Now that the Thief no longer animates the Green Man’s body, the fallen ruler looks benevolent, kind.

Mara pushes past me, falling to the side of her dead mate. She cries over the Green Man, clutching her chest like the loss physically hurts.

I rise on shaky legs, one of my hands still pressed to my stomach.

I feel my own life ebbing away from me. That horrible darkness creeps in from the edges of my vision.

I stagger then fall. Des catches me before I hit the ground.

“That was the Thief—”

“Ssshhh,” he says, laying me out on the ground before shucking off his shirt. Efficiently, he rips it into strips, making a tourniquet of sorts for my wound.

It’s too late for that. I know the Thief shredded vital things when he stabbed me. The soldier in Des knows it too.

I touch his battle-weary face, gazing into his fathomless eyes. They’re like a beacon, calling me to life. But the shadows are closing in on me…

“I love you, Des.”

“You arenotleaving me, Callie,” he says fiercely.

My cold hand slips from his face, and I start to descend into that final, eternal darkness.

Chapter 54

Desmond Flynn

She’s not going to die.

She can’t.

She may.

Just like my mother.