Page 49

VIOLET

Hold back. I take steadying breaths, barely forcing down the girl who would kill.

This can not be a repeat of the last Whitegrove we confronted. We only need to keep the witch here until Dorian arrives.

Rowan’s on the ground, gasping, shaking, trying to speak. I drop to my knees, instinctively pulled to my bonded witch, and hold my fingers against his temple. The connection sparks—Rowan’s magic is present but lost behind panic, his mind scrambled with thoughts I can’t grasp.

“What are you doing?” I ask hoarsely, looking over to Grayson who kneels close to the place he fell, arms wrapped around his head, cowering.

And Leif. He’s immobile. Staring at nothing.

“Everybody in this place leaves alive,” I warn Cornelius.

Cornelius’s expressionless face turns to me. “Not all of you.”

“Kill any of them, and I will end you,” I whisper, and stand.

He scoffs. “I’m referring to the three deceased, not your broken consorts .”

Cornelius strides toward me, the fool approaching the hybrid who would tear into him the way his magic attempted to tear into me. Viktor faltered when he stood face to face with that Violet, but this witch’s arrogant, self-assurance doesn’t drop.

“Go on. Kill me, but you’ll upset Daddy.” I blink at him. “That’s why you lured me here.”

“I didn’t lure you. I never expected to see you.”

He arches a brow and flicks a look to Grayson again. “Oh? Then the Petrescu isn’t here to help me ?”

“What do you mean?”

Cornelius turns his full focus to Grayson. The vampire screams out and his terror hits me as hard as the magic did moments ago. I’m by Grayson’s side in a heartbeat, holding his face.

Grayson looks at me. “No. I didn’t touch anybody else.” The fear pumps through his veins, eyes wild. “Josef. Listen to me.”

“Grayson!” I grab his arms and shake him. “It’s Violet.”

He lashes out, and I skid backward across the cave floor as I did the night in the warehouse, Grayson’s strength enough to catch me off guard.

Leaping to my feet, I whirl around. Cornelius chuckles, and I seize him by the suit jacket, crashing him into the limestone. The witch’s feet no longer touch the ground as I hold him up.

“What have you done to them?” I demand, baring my teeth.

“You refuse to grasp how powerful I am, Violet. I once erased my son from every witch’s memory,” he says softly. “Do you understand the magnitude of magic skill needed for that?”

I grip his jacket harder. “You will not erase them .”

He rasps a laugh, stirring the hybrid again and my nails sharpen. Behind me, Rowan’s mumbling continues, his breaths heavy.

“Your bonded isn’t faring well. To be honest, I doubted I’d get to you before he pulled out his oh-so-helpful shadows.” Cornelius sneers. “Now, he’s reliving what he did with when under their influence.”

“What does that mean?” I shout.

“Everybody has memories tangled with trauma, Violet. That’s where these boys are. I find that people locked in their minds can’t retaliate.” His lips press together. “My son may’ve mastered all magic, but nobody surpasses what I can do to minds.”

Cornelius seized my guys’ minds like they were nothing. He tried that on me, and I wouldn’t have held back if he’d touched my thoughts. I’d have ripped his mind apart in return.

Grayson’s scream reverberates, and I turn my head. He’s struggling for breath, holding his fingers around his neck, pushing against the skin.

“Oh. Has Josef killed Grayson in the past?” Cornelius asks in fake surprise. “That would be traumatic .”

Everything that Grayson suppresses, the horror that I once glimpsed inside his mind.

I yell and throw Cornelius aside, and he grunts from the force of the breath leaving his lungs as he lands beside the pool of water.

“If I’d managed to drag your memories to the surface, what would they have been? Or does the little hybrid girl think she’s immune to trauma?”

Maybe I still will.

“Yes? No? I’m confident you’ll experience something soon.” He tips his head toward Rowan. “I can see what’s in their minds. How interesting that Rowan’s biggest trauma wasn’t seeing you die but the day his shadows killed. Well, when he killed.”

I stomp over to Cornelius, a breath away from crushing one of the hands he uses to support himself to sit.

“Stop the spells!”

“Not until I’m safe. Several people in this room have self-control issues.”

“How can you be this calm?” I yell at him.

“How did you expect this to go, Violet?” he asks.

“I didn’t expect this to ‘go’ anywhere. But Dorian will find you, drag out the information he wants, and then?—”

“Kill me?” He chuckles. “Now, we both know that’s unlikely.”

I seize hold, lift and slam the man against the wall again, his head hitting the rock this time. The blinding white light returns, snatching the world from me for a moment, and I retaliate, hitting his mental wards. Not enough to break him, but enough to hurt.

Stay calm. Dorian will come. Dorian will take over. And Cornelius knows this is over for him.

But the guys. What if Cornelius’s spell ends my guys before my father arrives. I won’t let that happen.

“How can you do this to them and not expect me to kill you?”

“Because I have plenty of information to bargain with, and you’d never risk losing that and upsetting Daddy again. Something I hadn’t intended to hand over yet, but I should’ve expected this move from Josef Petrescu.”

He slips from my hands to the ground, my mind lurching as I struggle to catch up. Nearby pain and fear destroy these I love, as if they’re collateral damage.

This is more than Cornelius’s game.

“ Josef ?”

“He informed me that Dorian had taken you all to Scotland, and that if I had evidence to clear in the caves, I should take the opportunity.” He makes a sound low in his throat. “The bastard set me up.”

My tight lips pull into a smile. “And your plan to move evidence failed. You can’t hide what’s down here anymore.”

“I only wanted Viktor.” His eyes flicker, and he blinks away a thought. “The other two could’ve stayed. It would seem inappropriate to move them from their final resting places after such a long time.”

“And Sarah?” I demand. “She’s gone. Is her body nearby, ready to hide?”

“Sarah Sawyer? No clue. Ask Josef. He’s the parasite who weaseled his way in and protects her.”

No . No.

“Years ago, I couldn’t get to her before Josef did. He made me a promise, one he’s broken, and I will take him down with me. All of them.”

“Why risk all this? You could’ve destroyed Viktor for real this time!”

“Viktor is still leverage,” he rasps. “I hid him because I intend to show them his corpse and remind them I’m the powerful one. I’m the man who’s everybody and everywhere. Nothing and nobody is out of my reach.”

“Them? Who’s ‘them’?”

Cornelius attempts to stand, and I kick out at his legs that buckle, and his knees smack the rock. He sucks back the pained cry threatening to escape. “The witches. The names I have for Dorian.”

“I want the names! Now!”

“My, you are a petulant child.”

I’ve suppressed the hybrid, pushed her down for rationality, but I’ve nothing inside apart from the desire to hurt this man. My mind runs through thoughts and scenarios, lining up the logical way forward, as I always do. Murders. Threats. Viktor. Holly. All the people I love.

“You can’t do this!” I shout.

“Yet I am.”

Cornelius’s focus slides to Grayson again. That one look evokes a yell of anguish from him, and more desperate pleas to an imaginary Josef. I swallow down rising bile, and my vision blurs but not with the mist from the hybrid fury or Cornelius’s magic. Tears.

Everything spins around, as if I’m back out of reality again.

Leif and Rowan. Grayson. Broken.

“You won’t win. Your son didn’t.”

Cornelius flinches at the pitch of my scream as I throw him across the cavern floor again. He lands on the pile of rocks that cover his son, and he scrabbles to sit, but his hands slip on the stone.

“You should’ve spilled Grayson’s blood to catch my hybrid’s attention if you wanted to disable me. Now she’s focused on you.”

“As if you could risk the hybrid killing me,” he scoffs.

“I don’t intend to kill you, but I’m still going to hurt you.”

“No, you won’t.”

I pull Cornelius up. I could hold back my strength enough to slam his head against the wall to hurt him but not crush his skull.

If I hit him in the correct places, I could disarm him but not inflict serious internal injuries.

And I can assault his mind with magic that will make his spell on my guys the equivalent to a child’s.

Cornelius can suffer the same agony he’s inflicting on Grayson and Rowan.

I don’t need to kill the witch.

Do this carefully, Violet. The shifter I attacked at the lodge survived. Cornelius can too.

I throw Cornelius across the cavern again, and the witch cries out as his arm slams the wall.

“Have I broken you?” I stride over. “Even my father has lines he won’t cross. You and your son are on a different level of depravity. People like you need erasing.”

Finally, Cornelius shows fear, face streaked by blood, arm at an awkward angle.

I crouch and draw him as close to my face as possible. “Do you see an uncontrolled hybrid?” His eyes grow larger. “No? You think my father loses control and kills? Or do you think he calculates every move?”

But Cornelius doesn’t beg, his defiance enduring longer than Viktor’s ever did. “The world will see every mark Dorian Blackwood’s daughter leaves on me.”

“Once I’m done, you won’t be able to speak for a while. There’ll be no injuries left to see by the time you can walk and talk again.”

“Do it,” he whispers. “I dare you.”

With a roar, I fling the witch until he lands on Madison’s skeleton, crushing the bones. I make to move forward but a figure beats me to him, snatching Cornelius and yanking him upward.

“Did you lock a living man in this room?” Leif shouts.

I reel as Leif punches Cornelius in the face.

“Did you?” he yells.

Cornelius’s bloodied mouth parts. “Your mind. I had your mind.”

“You had hold of my human mind, arsehole,” growls Leif. “Not this half. Not the shifter.”

I’m arrested in shock as Leif punches Cornelius a second time, knocking back the man’s head with force that almost snaps his neck.

“You fucked with my mind. With Holly’s. I am not weak, and your witch friends will die if they come near me again. Any of us.”

Cornelius screams as Leif twists his broken arm, and as he falls to the floor, Leif’s boot pins his neck. He chokes for breath, and I break free of my shock.

Leif can’t kill too.

And he definitely can’t kill Cornelius.

“Always the shifters causing the problems.”

I jerk my head around to where Dorian stands in the gap, on the rock, exactly as Cornelius did minutes ago.

“I suggest you remove that boot before you crush his windpipe and make things worse for yourself, Leif.”

Leif withdraws his foot and takes several steps backward. Cornelius pulls in lungfuls of air and looks over.

I never thought I’d see one of Dorian’s enemies smile with relief at the sight of him.