Page 166 of A Touch of Gold and Madness

As soon as the blade was free from her body, black blood gushed from the wound like a broken faucet, covering my hands. I pressed my finger over the hole in her abdomen, trying hopelessly to staunch the flow. With my free hand, I stabbed her carotid with the syringe full of the antidote mix for both races, praying on my forsaken soul that it wasn’t too late.

With a final whisper of a kiss to her forehead, I rose again to face Forest. I felt Gray’s awareness spark back to life, and I released a much-needed breath.

Something dark and twisted braided itself into the stitches of my essence. I was a time bomb, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I had before it all went to shit. My mind might have been intact at the moment, but it would soon fade. The question was, how long did I have before I forgot Gray entirely and became a mindless, rotting creature with the sole intent of depleting?

My hand hitched in its movement as I dragged it down my face. The dark gray veins appearing beneath my gilded skin made my heart stop. I was Endarkened. Fully. There was no going back from that. I needed to make sure Gray was okay, kill Forest, and then get the fuck out of here before I turned on the only part of my soul that existed.

“Looks like you managed to escape becoming Endarkened after all,” Forest intoned. “You’re welcome.”

I angled my head, narrowing my eyes at him. “What are you talking about?”

Forest chuckled. “It never ceases to amaze me how ungrateful you and my daughter have always been.” He ran his hand through his obnoxiously green hair, fixing its messy state. “You’re bound, now. You’re more than an Endarkened. More than any of us. You’re an Infernal.”

I closed my eyes, clenching my jaw. “What the fuck is that?”

“You’ll be informed of the details soon enough.”

A groan had me snapping my head in Gray’s direction. She was stirring, the antidote taking hold.

Come on, Gray. Get up.

“And it’s only a matter of time before she is an Infernal, too,” Forest said, keeping his eyes on his daughter. “She’s bound. Just like you.”

“You’re fucking dead,” I growled, an inhuman sound escaping my throat.

“You get to keep your mind! You should be thanking me, boy!”

Instead of entertaining his narcissism, I returned to Gray’s side. Her eyes fluttered open, then widened at something she saw on my face. “No…” she rasped. The veins.

“Come on, Rainbow. You gotta get up,” I said, bending to help her to her feet.

Once she was steady, I peered into her shattered eyes. I felt her heart fracture, which made this more difficult. My soul was being stripped to fragments of glass while my heart felt like it was the permanent home to a dagger. I was being flayed alive from within. “Stay with me,” I whispered, my voice cracking from the emotion clogging my throat. I blinked away the moisture blurring my view of her perfect face so I could commit it to memory, holding her face in my hands.

The only minute comfort I took was that she had a family now and she was more than capable of protecting herself.

I needed her to have a shield, a powerful one. “Shield yourself.” My voice was so soft that Forest wouldn’t have been able to hear it. “Now.”

Gray closed her eyes in resignation, a sob breaking free despite her effort to stifle it. After the first one broke free, she didn’t try anymore. Her shoulders shook as she gave into reality, each sob ripping me open moreand more. “I love you.” I melded my lips with hers, coated in black blood. I absorbed her salty tears, taking anything of hers that I could.

I felt her air shield go up, then I reached down the bond we shared and added my newfound strength to it.

Still connected to her kiss—tasting her for the last time—I focused on all my pain, my losses, the injustice of whatever was happening to me. The emotion fueled the immense well of power as it built up to unimaginable levels. I absorbed all of the electromagnetic energy being emitted around me, including in the entirety of the King’s Palace and compressed it into the tightest, most compact ball in my core.

In a single pulse, I exploded it from my body.

Unlike when I knocked out the grid, this one would cause physical damage.

I went deaf briefly at the initial boom that was the equivalent of what I imagined nuclear bombs sounded like. The walls of the King’s Palace blew out in every direction. In one breath, the building no longer stood. One second it was there intact, and the next, debris thrashed violently around us in volatile gales. The shield protected Gray, while the debris dodged me altogether as I directed it to. I didn’t even have to break from Gray’s kiss to know what happened around me. Ifeltit. Controlled it.

I pulled her harder against me as the debris swirled around for several minutes. It was impossible to orient ourselves, so I kept my lips pressed to hers through the maelstrom. This was what I wanted her last memory of me to be. If I was going to bring the world to ruin, I’d do it with her in my arms, even as she wept into my goodbye.

After what felt like minutes, I broke the kiss, studying the woman who’d saved me from myself. “I’ll always find you.” With my thumb, I wiped the wet streaks from her face before I tore my gaze from her. Against everything inside me, I turned around, clenching my jaw tight against the agony in my heart. My feet crunched in the rubble, leaving her broken and alone in the wreckage as I walked away from my destruction.

Where was I going? I didn’t know. I just need to be anywhere other than here. Something dark slithered beneath my skin with an intensity worse than ever before.

Corrupted. I may have escaped becoming Endarkened, but I knew I was something far worse now.

Chapter 59

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