Page 168 of Brimstone

“Not magic. A spell,” Fisher said. “Something to affect Malcolm’s line. He severed you from his blood so that it wouldn’t affect you. He’d already done the same with you a long time ago, Foley.”

“And . . . what aboutme?”

I rounded on the voice, my mind fighting to make sense of what my eyes were seeing: Zovena, not as she had been earlier, when I had used her as a footstool. There was color in her cheeks. Her eyes were blue. I could hear her heart beating from where I stood, ten feet from her. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she flared her nostrils, staring down at Tal. “He dragged me into an alcove while you were dancing. I wasn’tfeeling well. I was dizzy. I . . .” She blinked. “He took me by surprise. I tasted it, whatever he tipped into my mouth, sour and . . . sweet, and then my eyes were full of stars. I woke up and . . . and . . .” She looked atme, as if I might be able to provide an explanation for what had happened to her.

I had none to give her.

Tal hadn’t mentioned a word of this to me. Not a peep.

“He’s having some kind of seizure,” Foley said.

“Give him something to bite down on,” Fisher fired back. “Make sure he doesn’t hurt himself.” He was busy scanning the floor of the Hall of Mirrors, looking for something; whatever it was, he couldn’t seem to find it. Turning to me, he said, “You’re okay? You’re feeling okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine.”

“Good. Can you wait here for me? Please? Help Foley with Tal?”

I nodded. “Yes. I—”

He whipped around, grabbing Zovena by the arm, and charged up the length of the hall, picking through the bodies as he went.

Everything was happening so quickly. Hundreds of vampires lay dead or dying on the ground. The air was thick with cloying copper, the scent so pungent that I wanted to throw up. Lying on his side, Tal’s body trembled violently; his eyes were rolled back into his head. His pale skin was spattered with blood, his beautiful dove-gray suit ruined.

“Is he going to be okay?” A stupid question. Absolutely idiotic. No,of coursehe wasn’t going to be okay. Tal hadnotwanted to drink the contents of that vial. He’d orchestrated this literal bloodbath, and he hadn’t wanted to stick around to see how it played out.

Foley’s dark expression said all of this and more. But there was a grim determination in his eyes, too. One that said hewasn’t about to let the Lord of Midnight go without a fight. “He’s calming now,” he said through gritted teeth. “He’s coming through the other side of it.”

Was this what it had been like in the maze, after Malcolm had attacked me? My blood, staining the ground. Tal, undertaking dire actions to save me? Yes, it must have been like this, in a way. But . . .

Fisher had acted as my proxy. He had given consent on my behalf. Here we were, forcing an outcome onto the silver-haired male at my feet explicitly against his will.

I didn’t care.

I wasn’t about to let him go, and neither were any of his friends.

Tal let out a wheezing gasp, back arching. His eyes snapped open, and Foley fell backward onto his ass, covering his face in his hands. The confidence he had spoken with just now must have been for show, because the strangled sound he made was all relief.

“What . . . did you do?” Tal croaked. His eyes rolled wildly up at us, though his body was at last still. He pressed a hand against the ground, ringed fingers sticky with blood, as if the room was spinning and he was worried he might not be able to hold on much longer.

“You can’t just do—dothis. . . and thenleave!” My emotions were all over the place. Any moment now, I was about to start sobbing. A part of me saw the carnage that surrounded me and was glad. The vast majority of Sanasroth’s high bloods were gone. They had accepted their true death, rather than return to what they once were. But we’d had aplan, damn it, and Tal had gone and made hisownplan without telling any of us.

“Why?” I crouched down beside the male and brushed his silver-spun hair out of his face. “Why dothis?”

But Taladaius only closed his eyes, as if I already had the answer to that question and he could not bear repeating it. A tear formed in the corner of his eye, crystal clear as water, welling before it rolled over the bridge of his nose and fell into the blood. “You have to let me go. I can’t stay,” he whispered.

“Hypocrite.”

Tal’s eyelids opened again, his eyes the same thunderhead gray they had always been. He looked at Foley, despair carved into the lines of his face. “You don’t understand—”

“I understand perfectly,” Foley spat. An anger had come upon him, swift and unforgiving. He shunted himself forward so he could take Tal’s jaw in his hand and force the male to look at him. “You told me time and time again that becoming a vampire doesn’t alter the foundations of who you are, only highlights them. Look around you. These bastards are crumbling to ash right now because they’re evil down to the festering marrow. They choose death over life because they don’t want to lose their power. There was no oath forcing them to carry out the atrocities they committed. It was in theirnature. You—” Foley broke off, shaking Tal’s head, forcing him to focus when he tried to turn away. “You are blameless. Whatever horrorsyoucommitted were forced upon you. Malcolmknewhow much it would tear you up inside.”

Tal closed his eyes, more tears cutting tracks down his cheeks, his features crumpling. “You have to let me . . .” he whispered.

“You’ll forgive yourself,” Foley insisted. “Youwill. And in the meantime, you can take that misplaced sense of guilt and use it to make amends. Help fix what Malcolm used you to break, Tal. There is stillhope.”

Taladaius’s head kicked back. Another seizure gripped him, twice as bad as before. He shook, face contorted into a rictus of pain.

This was worse than watching my friends in Zilvaren die. There was a tangible enemy there, but it seemed as though Tal’s own body was his enemy, and there was nothing I could do to fight that. “Why isn’t he getting better? The others . . .”