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Run, Fey prayed, willing Willow to hear her, to glance back at the window and see her. Run, Willow, please just run.

Willow stalked past Dameon, reaching a delicate hand into the crate and pulling out a bottle. A worry line appeared between her brows as she frowned at it.

“Dameon, what is?—”

Dameon stepped up behind her, slitting Willow’s throat before she could finish the question.

Fey screamed.

She barely registered the look on Dameon’s face as his head snapped to the window, seeing her there. Barely registered the soft swearing from Alastair as he pulled her tight against him.

“Hold your breath,” he commanded. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t hold her breath, she didn’t have any left. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, couldn’t stop screaming.

Dameon was moving towards them, his blade dripping with blood.

Blood from the Shifter, dead on the ground.

Blood from Willow, who clutched at the wound on her neck as though she could knit it back together.

And then all the colors in the world melted away into a wash of grey, and Alastair was Shadow Walking with her, moving them through a space where walls didn’t exist, moving her away from Dameon as he flung the window open and thrust his sword in the space where they had been.

Moving her to safety.

Chapter 38

The world was a blur of grey and black shadows as Alastair carried her through wall after wall, moving them through the palace with a speed that made her head spin.

Finally, he stopped, and color seeped back into the world as he released her.

Fey barely registered where they were—another empty bedroom, somewhere in the Western Wing—before she fell to her knees and vomited.

Alastair was saying something, but Fey couldn’t understand him. Her thoughts were too loud, the colors of the world suddenly too bright.

She was kneeling there, the room reeking of sick, Alastair’s voice falling on deaf ears, when Willow’s heart stopped beating. Fey felt it, felt the moment she was gone, like a thread inside her heart snapping, and in an instant the place where she had been was filled with her sisters.

Lilith’s shock and rage flooded through Fey like an inferno, followed by a sorrow so deep, so painful from Joy that Fey thought her heart might break and die.

And her own pain answered them. Shock. Horror. And betrayal. She pushed the emotions down the link to them, filling them with her pain, sharing their loss. Their sister was dead, and they’d only had her for such a short period of time. It wasn’t fair. She was so young, so sweet, their little Willow.

Alastair was shaking her, and slowly Fey pulled herself from the pain drowning her and focused on the world around her.

“We can’t stay here,” Alastair was telling her. “Fey, you need to snap out of it. You’re not safe here.”

Not safe.

No, she wasn’t safe here. Wasn’t safe anywhere, anymore.

Dameon had killed her sister. She couldn’t trust him, couldn’t trust anyone anymore.

“Fey!”

She forced herself to look at him, forced herself back into her body. She took a deep, shuddering breath and nodded.

“It’s not safe here for you,” he repeated.

“I know,” she said. This wasn’t her home. Not anymore.

“Is there a safe house you can go to? Somewhere they can’t find you?”