Page 24

24

MERCER

What the heck was Mercer even doing?

He watched the light dance across the metal in his palm, a beam of its golden reflection flickering over his brown skin and across the grass. It seemed to spark into the carved lines of Leah’s gravestone.

He hadn’t said a word to her since he’d arrived—he wasn’t sure exactly what he had to say—but it had felt right to come. Or, it hadn’t felt right not to. Or something. He wasn’t sure anymore.

Mercer wasn’t sure of anything , except that he’d done what he could with the metal in his hands, and now he had to decide what to do with the vampire who’d helped him make it.

“I’m not replacing you.” Mercer’s voice caught as he whispered it, and the lump in his throat seemed only to grow from there. “I know you know that.”

Leah's grave didn’t answer, but he felt what might have been the ghost of her laughter, or just the memory of every time she’d playfully made fun of him. Of course she would laugh now—that’s what she’d always been: joy and passion and life. Right up until the night she wasn’t any of those things.

Mercer closed his eyes and twisted the unholy gold again, feeling the power that flowed through it now, as forceful as any holy silver, but no longer deadly. Hopefully. He had more than just this hope riding on tonight though.

He forced himself to tuck the metal away, pulling out his phone instead and flipping to the thread with Rahil’s texts—nothing new in the last twenty-four hours.

One way or another, they had to finish this. So Mercer started typing.