Page 4 of Claimed By Fangs and Darkness

My brows were drawn close, my face crestfallen as I stared from Idris’s body to Evie. She was within arm’s reach. I wasn’t sure the last time my hand had trembled, but it did now, violently, as I slowly let go of the bloody shirt.

“He’s alive,” she croaked. The inflection was like a question as she nodded her head and reached to feel for Idris’s pulse. She homed in on my stained hand, the rag I’d dropped now swimming in a pool of blood.

The nodding turned into a vigorous shaking of her head. “No, no?—”

She touched Idris’s cheek, her eyes scanning his body.

She wailed again, her chest rising and falling rapidly, her heart working too hard.

I pulled her into my arms. At first she fought me, hurling a slew of curses and begging me to help her save him.

Then she relented and slumped in my arms.

“He’s gone,” I said, confirming what she already knew. “I’m so sorry, Evie.” My voice cracked.

“I—” Her next words were unintelligible, but I intuited their meaning.

“It wasn’t you—it wasn’t your fault.”

I assumed the born had been responsible for Idris’s injuries. Evie had to understand that her outburst hadn’t killed her brother. I’d shielded us from her shadows.

From my arms, her head was still turned toward Idris, her hand twisted in his shirt as she sobbed.

“I made the wrong choice,” she said, letting go of Idris’s shirt as she buried her head in my chest. A tremor rolled through her.

She needed a healer. Her heart wasn’t beating right.

“I should’ve died,” she said.

“You should’ve, but you didn’t,” I choked out. She’d been terrifyingly close to death—far, far too close—and this brave, resilient girl survived the impossible anyway.

“I should’ve chosen to die.”

I realized I’d misunderstood her the first time, and her true meaning was a devastating blow to my already shattered heart.

I clutched her tighter before remembering my vampiric strength and her broken, fragile body.

Her speech became slurred, and I pulled back to study her. Her eyes fluttered. Her breathing turned slow and ragged.

“What was the point? Was there ever a point?” she asked. “Maybe they were right… the nihilists…”

Evie lost consciousness.

The best healersin the city tended to Evie, while others cleaned up Idris, preparing him for a death rite.

Evie’s loss was what finally broke through my own protective barriers, the walls I’d erected in the wake of Princeton’s death in order to lead effectively. I hadn’t allowed myself to grieve. I didn’t have the time for it.

If you don’t grieve properly, that pain will leak out in far less desirable ways. Feel it, Kylo.

Princeton’s voice echoed in my mind—what I’d imagine he might say if we were in a healing session.

That choked sensation was back. It was so human, so raw.

All I could do was stare at Evie, her chest rising and falling more evenly now as a blood witch delivered fluids and healing tinctures straight into her veins. She was still unconscious, lying on a cot in the healing wing of our hidden, underground facilities.

“The city is panicked. The Servants of Lillian are calling it an act of Lillian’s wrath, a sign from the gods in favor of their religious delusions. The born?—”

“Phineas,” Harmony snapped, her gaze fiercely sweeping from me to my most trusted, lethal eye.