Page 69 of Broken Souls

I nod, relief flowing across my chest. But I don’t get to stop and enjoy it, don’t get to take a moment just to breathe it in. Instead, I have to send out an email to all my capos. As my fingers tap away on my phone, I tell them about Talon’s betrayal and how there is a reward for anyone who finds him and reports back. Double if they grab him, but I want him alive so I can fucking torture him myself.

Slipping my phone into my pocket, I head down the stairs, Maddox following. We spot our brothers through a glass door in front of the elevators, leading outside into the parking lot. Enoch raises his hand and opens it with his magic, allowing us to bypass having to go back through the lobby. The hot night air presses on my skin as we join them.

“I don’t understand why Talon would do this,” Leno says sadly, his arms folded across his chest. Krypto is off sniffing the trees. “To turn on us all like that?”

“Maybe he just hates Khalid?” Ezriel offers. “It’s him he kidnapped.” There is a moment of heavy silence, where a weight is felt. Khalid is the reaper, and as much as he is their brother, he is not fully loved by them, not fully trusted due to being able to kill them all so easily.

My jaw locks as the silence stretches, thatunderstandingof why Talon might have done what he did permeating the air.Khalid has given his life to this fucking family, taken on all the shit they are too weak to do, and this is what they truly think of him?

Maddox glances at me, and there is a look in his eyes.We are here, it says. We risked our lives to come for him.

So I bite back my rising anger and paranoia. As much as they might fear the reaper in the dark depths of their mind, not one of them hesitated to come here tonight.

“Maybe it’s not Khalid Talon wanted gone,” Enoch says slowly. He looks at me apologetically. “You did kill his best friend.”

“Khalid killed him,” Maddox says.

“He gave the order.”

“Because the guy was a nut job who wanted to –”

“It doesn’t matter why Talon has turned traitor,” I cut in. “He set Micha up as his patsy and nearly got Mother killed. His reasons will not save him.”

A grim silence settles over us, filled with grief from my brothers, filled with anger from me. As much as I want to direct that all at Talon though, I can’t. I was the one who decided to hurt Micha like I did.

I could have called Aleric.

I could have questioned Zita.

Instead, I hammered a screw into her hands over and over again and shaved off her fingers chunk by chunk. Her screams are on repeat inside my skull, and I fear there is nothing I can do to fix what I have done.

But by the gods, I will spend my whole life trying.

Just as soon as I can get back home.

Twenty-Five

HER

Sitting in my room, I stare at my hands, not able to see a single mark on them. Sau even rebuilt my severed fingers using dark magic. She numbed an area of my thigh, then cut off a small chunk of extra fat – a cut she matched on the other leg. She could have used the meat in the fridge, but I didn’t like the idea of being part pig or cow or alligator. And after what Varius did to me...two more cuts were nothing.

But despite how right my hands look, despite how well she fixed them, assuring me that they are completely healed now, there is somethingwrong.

Because I’ve been trying for the last hour to call a flame to my fingers, but there’s no heat, no fire. No flicker of light.

I can feel the magic burning away inside of me, coiled tight in my chest, but no matter how much I demand it, how much I beg it, itwill not come.

So I’m starting to hyperventilate.

Starting to panic just as badly as I was when I thought I was losing our child.

“Come on,” I mutter, willing my fingers to burn. “Come on…come on!”

But there is nothing.

Just a collapsing chest as reality starts to press in on me.

“No,” I growl, the denial ragged and raw. “No.”