Page 144 of The Mirror of Beasts

He drew in a rough breath.

“We would have helped you, if you’d come to us.”

He drew his knees up toward his center, pressing his face to his palm. She wouldn’t understand. There was no point in explaining it to her. What he had done, what he had allowed to happen, that marked him as her enemy forever.

“It’s not too late,” she told him. “Tamsin is fighting for you. She still believes in you, Cabell.”

“Shut up!” He banged a fist back against the door. “That’s not my name!”

“Did you know?” Olwen asked. “What he planned to do to them?”

Flea shivered in front of him, her form turning rigid with agony. Blood spilled from her slashed chest, and she gasped, choking on the blood dripping from her lips.

His hand fisted in his hair, he squeezed his eyes shut. But the image was seared into his mind now.

“As angry as you were at your sister,” Olwen continued, weeping, “why did you have to hurt mine?”

“I didn’t,” he choked out. “I didn’t—”

He hadn’t raised a sword. He hadn’t shifted and hunted alongside the Children. He had been a coward and hid in the underpaths of the tower, waiting for the horrible deed to be done.

He was nothing.

Shift, he thought. Turn her words, her sobs, into human words he no longer understood. His body was begging for it, the release.

“There’s an end to this,” Olwen told him. “It’s not too late. They didn’t have to die for nothing. These people, these hunters that you’ve allied yourself with … you’re not like them. You are better than them—than all of this.”

“Shut up.” The words were harsh in his throat and harsher still in his ears. He banged his fists against the door again. “Shut up or next time I’ll let them tear you to shreds!”

He fled down the stairs before he had to hear her answer, despising himself with every footstep. He knew he was a coward, but he couldn’t stand it. Not the sound of her voice or the salt streaking her tears.

No one would bother her. The house had quieted in the small hours of the morning. Some of the hunters had been sent to find wherever the sorceresses had hidden themselves, but he heard the rest in the back, ripping tormented shrieks from the Children.

Shift, he told himself again. Run.

Run until everything fell away and his thoughts were clear again. He could take advantage of the acres that surrounded the house. They were miles from the nearest neighbor. Run.

And he might have run, had the door to his master’s study not opened.

His blood curdled at the sight of Endymion stepping out of the darkness, followed by …

She was there and gone through the front door in less than an instant. But the unmistakable red of her hair, the flirtatious way she stroked at Endymion’s ghostly form—he would have recognized her anywhere.

What the hell?

Lord Death murmured, “Yes, see to it,” to Endymion, and sent him away with a dismissive wave.

“Good evening, Bledig,” said his master. “Is something amiss with our guest?”

“She’s fine,” the seneschal said. But he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the front door. Had his mind been settled, he wouldn’t have dared to ask, “Why did you not kill that sorceress?”

The silence suffocated him with icy hands.

“Do you know her from your false life?” Lord Death asked. “I’ll admit, she’s been useful. She was able to provide what we couldn’t see in the girl’s memories.”

Why didn’t you tell me you were working with the sorceress? The question screamed through him. What had he done to lose his master’s trust? If he didn’t have that, how long would it be before he lost everything else?

Primm’s words hovered behind him, stroking down his neck. But what will become of you when our task here is done?

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