Page 144 of Kingdom of Briars and Roses

But it wasn’t over.

Duron remained, untouched, standing in the firelit garden like a ghost of every nightmare I’d ever had. I turned to him, blade slick with Koraz’s blood?—

And my body seized.

Pain. Deep, writhing, unnatural. My hands trembled as I tried to lift my sword, but the moment I so much as thought of striking him, the blood vow coiled around my bones like barbed wire, lashing deep.

I gasped, barely able to breathe.

Duron smiled. “I wondered when you’d try.”

I could do nothing. Couldn’t move, couldn’t fight. I was utterly, uselesslyhelpless.

And Aurelia saw it all.

Her face was unreadable—shock, betrayal, fury all twisting into something I didn’t have the words for. But there was no time to explain, no time to tell her I’d done this toprotect.

Because the furyfire at her fingertips erupted into an inferno.

Duron’s smirk vanished, and he threw his hands up to block it. A windstorm blew from his palms—the last dregs of his waning magic—and for a moment, I wondered if it would be enough to stop the furyfire, but it didn’t last. The black flames overtook the wind, eating through whatever barrier it had provided. The moment those dark flames touched his flesh, Duron screamed.

But Aurelia’s flame didn’t stop.

Rather than lick at his clothing, it engulfed Duron’s entire form. He staggered, his vain glamour peeling away, his wrinkled skin cracking like scorched parchment beneath the force of her magic. He opened his mouth—to speak, to scream—but the furyfireswallowed him whole.

I felt it like a weight being lifted off my skin. A pressure between my shoulder blades that had been there so long I’d forgotten what it felt like without it. But then it was gone. The blood in my veins answered to Duron no longer.

Instead, it sang only for her.

The flames winked out, and all that remained of the Autumn king was a pile of ash.

Trembling, Aurelia stared at Duron’s ashes, her golden hair wild, her skin glowing as if she’d somehow taken power from the kill itself. Slowly, she turned to me, and I noted the power that still clung to her skin, still burned in her eyes. But it wasn’t triumph in her expression. It was something darker. Something depthless and unending and fated. Something even the Fates and Furiosities hadn’t seen coming.

I knew, in that moment, that I should be afraid.

Not of her.

Forher.

For what she’d just done.

For what she’d become.

For what she’d do when she found out the truth. Not just what I’d planned for her tonight but the truth of her choices and who’d ordered me to let her make them. To do it all without telling her what had really brought me into her life. The truth of what she was capable of. What she’d just chosen. And what it would cost her in the end.

And how, no matter that I’d kept her safe?—

She might never forgive me for any of it.

Chapter Forty-Five

Aurelia

Rydian stared at me like he’d seen a specter. The furyfire had cooled inside me, but my veins swam with the life force I’d taken from Duron just before he’d?—

Before I’d ended him.

And whatever power I’d unleashed inside me went far beyond anything I’d ever wielded before. Maybe that was why Rydian looked so stricken.

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