Page 31

“ L ana.”

A sob is working its way up my chest, ready to explode through my entire body, when Juliet walks over and kneels beside me.

My eyes slide over to meet hers, and I don’t know if I’m really seeing anything right. She has this expression I can’t explain.

“It’ll be okay,” she says as she places a hand on mine.

I want to scream at her, cry, curse, because what the hell could she mean? Of course it won’t be alright. But she looks back at Roman, who stands just five feet behind her. There’s a look of pained resignation, and he turns away from Juliet, deliberately not looking at her.

“Well,” Juliet mutters, her voice heavy with something between weariness and inevitability. “Here we go again.”

I can’t even process her words. It’s like they won’t sink into my brain. I can’t sort them out or make any sense of them. Not when my whole world just evaporated.

Juliet looks back at Sysco, and then looks me square in the eye and says, “Just keep what’s about to happen to yourself, okay?”

I don’t understand.

Until she hovers her hand over Ares’ chest, and then rests it against his skin.

Instantly, a cry of pain escapes her lips, and for a moment, I think she’s been shot as blood sprays from her chest. The very next second, she slumps forward.

Dead.

Ares gasps. His back arches.

The stake in his chest pops out like it’s been launched from within. His eyes fly open. He sits up, wild and breathless.

Holy shit.

Holy shit.

I stare.

Ares.

Alive.

Alive?

Ares looks around the room, dazed. His body tenses, though he’s obviously in pain. He holds a hand to his chest where he was just staked and grimaces. He turns to me, dazed. “Lana…”

“Ares,” his name comes across my lips in an emotional, disbelieving tremble. I throw myself into his arms, and this time, I can’t stop the sob that works its way out of my body.

He’s alive.

Ares is alive.

“What the hell just happened?” Sysco asks from the other side of Ares. His voice is high, shocked. It echoes in the bloody silence that fills the massacre site.

“Lana,” Ares says again as he splays a hand against the side of my face.

He’s looking around at the mess that’s around us.

He lets out a groan again, rubbing at the place in his chest where the stake was just moments ago.

The gaping hole is already knitting itself closed.

“What…?” But he trails off, at a loss for words.

More tears cascade down my face, another sob heaving my chest. My brain and heart can’t catch up with the whiplash that’s just happened. I can’t make sense of any of it.

I cradle him in my arms, rocking slightly in the aftermath of everything, blood soaking into my jeans, my hands sticky with it—but I don’t care. He’s warm again. Breathing. His heartbeat thrums against my chest like a war drum, and I can’t stop the tears that fall.

I’m shaking. I can’t stop touching him—his face, his chest, his shoulders. He looks dazed, like he’s still trying to piece together where he is. I press a kiss to his jaw, another to his temple, and whisper against his skin.

“I thought I lost you,” I breathe. “I thought?—”

“I was dead!” Ares suddenly realizes, the shock taking over. He searches my eyes frantically. “How?”

“Seriously, what the fuck just happened?” Sysco barks again, looking around with wild eyes. “Juliet, is she… Is she really dead? How the hell did she do that? Did she bring Ares back?”

The room goes still again as reality crashes back in.

Juliet is lying right beside me. She definitely looks dead.

And just ten feet away, her husband stands with his back deliberately turned to her.

“Roman,” I say his name, a terrified question.

He doesn’t turn around immediately. His shoulders are slumped, his head hanging slightly. And as I study his form, I realize he’s shaking.

Whatever the hell just happened, he knew it was coming, and he looked away so he didn’t have to see it.

“Roman,” Ares says his name, more persistent than I inquired.

I see Roman take a deep, steadying breath. He lifts his face to the ceiling for a moment, his eyes closed. And finally, I see resolve in his shoulders as he turns and walks across the stage. Without a word, he walks past Sysco and me. His eyes lock on Juliet’s body.

She’s crumpled on the floor. Still and pale.

Roman drops to his knees beside her, not with a crash but with a quiet reverence. Like she’s sacred. He gathers her up carefully, as if she’s made of porcelain, and tucks her against his chest.

“She died for him,” he says quietly. “It’s her gift. And her curse.”

Ares stiffens in my arms. “What do you mean?”

Roman brushes Juliet’s hair back from her face with a trembling hand. “Juliet’s mother cursed her when she was a baby. She can’t really die.”

“But she is,” Sysco says, voice tight. “She looks pretty fucking dead to me.”

“She’s died dozens of times,” Roman says, his voice hollow. “But she always comes back.”

Ares sits up straighter, still rubbing the place on his chest where he was staked. “What do you mean? She died for me?”

Roman just nods, his jaw tight. There’s pain in his eyes.

Old pain. Deep. I wonder just how many times he’s had to watch his wife die.

“It’s an exchange. Her life for yours. Only there’s a loophole, because she can’t stay dead.

Her curse is that she cannot die. Her gift, just like how Markus can raise the dead and Ophelia can influence people, is that Juliet can die for other people. ”

My head is spinning with all that information.

Juliet is like Markus. Like Ophelia. Like that damn therapist.

Juliet is a Born vampire, but she is also gifted.

That’s what she meant when she said here we go again . She’s done this before. A lot of times, if I had to guess.

“So, she’s going to come back?” I ask softly.

“In five minutes,” Roman says without looking at us. “Give or take.”

Something about the way he says it—the absolute certainty, the weight in his voice—says this isn’t the first or second time he’s held her like this and waited.

The way he turned his back right before Juliet touched Ares…

Roman knew exactly what Juliet was about to do. And he couldn’t stand to watch it.

How many times has Roman seen Juliet die?

“That’s about the craziest shit I’ve heard yet,” Sysco says as his eyebrows rise toward his hairline and he shakes his head. “But damn if that gift wouldn’t come in handy all the time.”

Ares and I sit on the floor beside him, our legs tangled, both of us still catching our breath. He touches my face again, gently, his thumb brushing away the tears I didn’t realize were still falling.

“You’re okay?” he murmurs.

“You were just dead, and you’re asking if I’m okay?” I balk.

Ares expression darkens. “I saw James stab you.”

“Right, I forgot,” I admit stupidly. I look down at my chest. My shirt has a hole, but there’s no evidence that I was pierced in the chest and nicked in the heart.

There isn’t any blood there. There isn’t even a red scar.

“It’s totally healed already. Honestly, I hardly felt it for more than two seconds. The regeneration is… diabolical.”

“I’ll be thanking Florence every fucking day of my life,” Ares says as he cups a hand behind my head and pulls my forehead to his.

“You got fucking stabbed?!” Sysco bellows, looking at me with huge eyes. “And you’re just fine?”

I nod. “I’m fine.”

Sysco shakes his head. “That’s it. I don’t know a damn thing anymore. Vampires getting staked and being fine, others bringing people back from the dead. The whole rulebook is out the window.”

I chuckle. And I’m so grateful for Sysco. That, even in a moment like this, he can still make me smile.

But my heart has another attack when, just a moment later, Juliet gasps.

She lurches forward in Roman’s arms like someone waking from a drowning dream. Her eyes snap open. Her hands clutch his shoulders.

Roman doesn’t flinch. He just exhales slowly and pulls her closer.

“Hey,” he says softly.

Juliet blinks, dazed. “What…?”

“You did it,” he says. “You brought him back.”

She groans and drops her head against his chest. “Oh, good. Can we just get me a punch card at this point?”

Another tear gathers in the corner of my eye. I push to my hands and knees, my palms smearing in the blood beneath us, and crawl over to her.

Without hesitation, I wrap my arms around her. She smells like blood and sweat and death—but she’s warm. Alive.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

Juliet’s voice is muffled in my shoulder. “No biggie. Just another Saturday.”

I let out a wet, half-hysterical laugh and pull back, brushing a hand through my hair. And then Ares is there, wrapping his arms around both Juliet and Roman.

“Thank you,” he says, his voice gritty. “I owe you both everything.”

Ares understands what it took out of Roman to watch his wife do what she did. It ripped a piece of his soul apart, and Ares wants to recognize that.

“No problem,” Juliet chuckles as she hugs Ares back. “Just don’t go dying again. What I just did? It’s a one-time thing.”

“I’ll do my best,” Ares chuckles.

Good to know, though.

The look Roman gives Ares as he backs away says something. It’s different between them now. There’s a bond there.

Juliet groans again, rubbing her face. “Okay, well, that sucked. How long was I out?”

“Exactly five minutes,” Roman answers, helping her sit up. “I timed it.”

“You would.” She smirks tiredly and leans into him. He kisses her forehead, his fingers running through her hair like he’s grounding himself.

Sysco climbs to his feet, looking around at the utter carnage—the puddles of blood, the ripped flesh, the broken bodies, and the carnage of what was nearly the end of the damn world.

“Well… now what the fuck do we do?”