Page 171 of Brimstone

“I don’t care, Fisher! Kill me if you like! I knew there would be a price for all of this. It’s a price I wasbornto pay!” She spoke quickly, her hands shaking as my shadows shoved against her wards. It wouldn’t take long. One firm push from me and I would break through. I’d fuckingkillher for what she’d done. “Listen to me. Wait!” she cried. “Is he here?”

“He’s resting upstairs,” Foley snarled. He had kept his peace throughout the entire exchange, but it seemed he could hold his tongue no longer. “He’s still convulsing every five minutes. He may never recover from thatshitwe had to pour down his throat.”

“No! You need to take me to him. Rightnow!”

“Like hell we do—”

“Why?”I demanded. Plainly, the witch was spooked.

Iseabail drew in a ragged breath, her hands shaking even harder as my shadows nearly broke through her ward. She met my eyes and held them, speaking urgently. “The sigils I marked the thralls with, they weren’t big enough. Weren’t strong enough. I couldn’t risk the high bloods sensing the magic on them or seeing large marks. I needed a much bigger conduit to channel the spell, one that would then redirect the energy to the thralls and complete the spell.”

“What are you talking about, Iseabail?” Saeris was already getting to her feet; she was following my lead. A grim realization had fallen on me while the witch was speaking—I was already heading toward the door.

The fucking tattoo.

The one I’d seen covering Tal’s chest back in the Hall of Tears, beneath his loose shirt. It hadn’t been a tattoo after all. It was awitch mark.

Fuck.

I tore past the witch, pulling back my shadows. “Will it kill him?” I demanded.

She dropped her ward and followed at a dead sprint. “If I don’t get to him immediately, it’ll killallof us.”

The curtains were already on fire when we reached the bedroom. The bedsheets, too. The paint on the oil landscape hanging above the bed was blistered and melting, running over the gilt frame and down the wall. Taladaius lay still on the bed where we’d left him, hoping he’d feel better after some rest. His body was engulfed in flames, though his skin wasn’t burning. Not yet. His shirt was gone, burned away, revealing his bare chest and the monstrous witch mark that spread from shoulder to shoulder, spanning his torso from collarbone to hips.

“Zareth save us,” Te Léna hissed, as she barreled into the room behind us and saw the mark. “What the hell were you thinking? The knots on that kind of spellwork can’t be undone!”

The lines of it were woven tight, hundreds and hundreds of spells bound together consecutively, forming a tapestry of sigils that would have taken an entire clan of witches a full month to untangle. Te Léna was right: We were fucked.

“I have totry,” Iseabail cried. “I knotted them. I can undo them!”

“Why would youdothis to him?” Maynir flinched back from the bed, from the heat of the flames, from the cruelty of the spellwork, as if he couldn’t bear to witness any of it.

Iseabail’s hands were flying. The mark lit up in her presence, the spell responding to its creator. She plucked and pulled at the threads of the spell, unraveling them as fast as she could. “He was supposed to take itwithhim,” she spat through clenched teeth. “He said he was going to die! The spell would have diedwithhim!”

It was too late.

We’d survived the fall of the Blood Court and so many other impossible situations, only to fall afoul of the witch mark to end all witch marks. What a fucking joke.

Foley stood outside the bedroom, the flames raging in his eyes. Next to him, Carrion held the knife he’d been carrying in his teeth earlier as if he were ready to use it, but there was no one to use itagainst. “What the fuck is happening?” He winced away from the wall of heat radiating from the bed Tal was lying on. “Why’s Talon fire?”

“The mark on his chest. It’s borrowed magic.Darkmagic. It lends power to the one who binds it. But left unchecked,stealspower. Eventually, it will open a gateway that cannot be closed.” Te Léna had to shout over the roar of the fire and Iseabail’s frantic chanting.

“What kind of gateway?” Saeris asked. I had shielded her from the heat with my body, but she had stepped around me now and was moving toward the bed. Her right hand was lit up and blazing like an angry star. “A gateway to where?” Her voice was quiet, but all heard it.

“To the realm from where all dark magic hails,” Te Léna answered. “Thedemonrealm. I will not say its name!”

Iseabail’s fingers plucked, untying, blurring in their speed. But she wasn’t moving fast enough. This kind of mark wasn’t designed toeverbe undone. It was a death sentence and the reason Tal had begged us to let him die. He’d known about the destruction he was wearing in his skin, and he’d tried to stop it. He’d tried to prevent this from happening, but none of us had listened.

“I can feel them,” Saeris muttered. “They want to get through. They’re . . .hungry.” Her hair had pulled loose from the elaborate style she had worn for the ball and was floating eerily around her as she stepped toward the bed.

Careful, Osha. The fire’s real. Itwilltake you.I reached for her and regretted it instantly. The second my hand touched hers, the runes that marked my skin, mirroring hers, exploded with light. A pain like no other tore up my arm and detonated inside my head, bringing me to my knees. I couldn’t think around it. Couldn’t breathe. Someone was shouting something somewhere—Hayden, screaming for his sister to get back. Foley was holding him, stopping him from rushing into the blazing room.

I had to get to Saeris. I needed to.

The fire blanketed the ceiling, rolling over the depiction of the night sky painted there, defying gravity and swallowing the stars.

Hell was coming.