Page 108 of Shadow's Heart

She struggled to free herself, but the sand was sucking her down . . . to her knees . . . to her waist . . . “Stop this! Why are you doing this to me?”

He gazed on with murderous intent as the sand reached her chest.

“Are you going to drown me?Me?” The male she loved was about to kill her. When sand circled her throat, she gasped for air and screamed, “Adham, no!”

“You’re going to take me to Dacia,” he finally grated. “Or I’ll put you under again and again.” Just before she sank beneath the surface, his sand lifted her up into a tornado cage of spinning grains. “I’ll torture you until you do.”

Trapped within his sorcery, she couldn’t even trace. Her mist ability hadn’t renewed yet. Over the buzz of the tornado, she cried, “How could you do this?How?”

“I will find him and kill him. I won’t stop until he’s dead.”

Suddenly a claw-tipped hand breached the scouring sands of her cage. Caspion? A roar sounded as the sand abraded his skin away, leaving ragged meat and bone up to the elbow. What was once a hand still managed to clamp around her arm. Somehow Caspion locked onto her—to trace her away.

As they disappeared, the sorcerer lunged for her, bellowing, “Kosmina!”

Caspion teleported her into Dacia’s court. Eyes black with emotion, he released her and traced to his mate who lay on the stone floor. Her brother was unconscious, his head hanging on by a tatter of flesh. Would it be enough to regenerate? Lothaire had recovered from a similar injury, but he was ancient and strong! Mirceo was barely older than Mina.

Caspion knelt beside Mirceo with a bellow of anguish, his own pain forgotten.

Lothaire traced into the court then, half-dressed and balancing on one leg. “What the hell happened?” He looked from Mirceo to Caspion to Mina.

Her lips moved but devastation rendered her speechless.

“Ah.” Understanding shone in the depths of Lothaire’s eyes. “Beware the Sorceri.”

Fifty-One

“Kosmina, nooo!”Adham sank to his knees, fists clenched around sand. He cursed it, cursing his renewed power. His sorcery had launched beyond his control, his words and actions not his own.

How? Why?

Eyes wet and mind on fire, he threw back his head and roared to the sky, “Believe in me, Mina.” One last time.

Compulsion struck; he morphed his sand into a dagger—and stabbed his own eye out with it.

Fifty-Two

Castle Dacia

Intervention, vampire-style.

The goal: getting Mina to drink.

And maybe to sleep.

All her family and friends had gathered at sunset in Dacia’s court to “talk some sense into her”—because they’d failed to do so in their succession of one-on-one visits with her over the last week.

Lothaire and Ellie sat upon their thrones decorated with gilded skulls. Mirceo and Caspion leaned against the edge of the dais. Her uncles Stelian, Viktor, and Trehan, with his sorceress mate Bettina, stood nearby. Beside Ellie’s throne, Balery looked on with a pensive expression.

The one person missing was Kristoff. He’d believed his presence would be an intrusion, but Mina also thought he was even more preoccupied with Furie than usual.

Caspion’s hand had finished regenerating. Lothaire’s leg had. A bandage still circled Mirceo’s neck, but at least he’d regenerated enough to leave his bed.

Mina had fully recovered from her illnesses. Balery had tested her blood and believed she was now immune to both the plague and ghoul toxin.

Yet my heart remains broken.Worry for Mirceo, Caspion, and even Adham fogged her brain, but she knew she was forgetting something critical. If she could just rest her eyes for a moment, she could figure it out. She hadn’t slept since she’d returned.

Lothaire intoned, “We’ve called you here this eve because some people are concerned about you.”

---