Page 87 of This Violent Light

“Oskar, if you don’t?—”

“See, but that’s your problem,” he interrupts. “Your only way to threaten me is with my own life. You can torture me, starve me, kill me…but that’s where your options end. I have only ever loved one person in this world, Master, and you stole her from me.”

“This is about your fucking wife?” I ask. I’m seething, vibrating with coiled fury and tension. “She died by the witches’ curse, not my hand, and it’s been twenty years. It’s too late for petty revenge.”

“Not revenge,” Oskar says. He shakes his head, drawing a deep breath and closing his eyes. The final word is spoken on a breath of relief. “Justice.”

“So what, this curse kills your wife and now you’re damning us all?” Beatrice demands. Tears leak down her face, and her fangs extend as she glares at him. “Ruiningallof our lives, just because you’ve suffered. As if weallhaven’t?—”

“It is not about you,” Oskar says gently. He speaks as ifshe’s a selfish, petulant child, as if she’s too young to understand. “It is abouthim.”

His eyes are back on me. I search them, searching for each splinter of evil within the grey.

“His selfish behavior took my one love from me,” he says. “And now, my selfish behavior will take his from him.”

“Where is she?” I roar.

I’m on the other side of the table before he can blink. Before anyone else so much as moves, I have him pressed to the glass window, my nails digging through the flesh of his throat. Blood leaks over his pale skin, but Oskar only smiles at me.

“Horrible, isn’t it?” he wheezes. “You found the most beautiful thing in the world, and someone else stole it away.”

I close my fist, slowly crushing his windpipe. The life drains from his eyes, but he loses consciousness with a smile on his face.

“She’s alive,”Cora says.

She sits in Oskar’s usual place at the stone table. The other inner circle members remain in their seats. I don’t think any of them were involved in Oskar’s treachery, but I’m not letting them leave. They’ll stay here until we know what happened. Where she is. How to find her.

I glance over my shoulder at Oskar. He’s tied to my statue, rope tight enough he won’t be able to move. For now, he’s still unconscious, crushed windpipe healing with agonizing slowness. I wish he was awake to feel it.

I focus on the table again. Cora has one hand over Grace’s electronic. The other clenches a fistful of amberherbs, hand pulsing in steady rhythm. She’s exhausted. It’s been an hour of this, and her eyes keep rolling back, skin paling every time she attempts a spell.

“It’s getting less cloudy,” she says after some time. “Now that I can sense her…”

“Where?” I demand. “Tell me where.”

I stand with one leg on my bench, shaking it so hard the cobblestone beneath it cracks. I can’t stand still. I can’t do anything but imagine what he’s done to her. Is she beaten? Bloodied? Left for dead in one of the far-reaching vampire clans?

Cora goes back to muttering, her eyes rolling to pure white. I pace the courtyard as she works, only pausing to kick Oskar in the shin. It’s not the first time I’ve done it, and even as his throat heals, I make sure his legs don’t. Lest he gets any ideas about trying to run.

A heavy thump sounds behind me. By the time I’ve turned, Amelia and Milas are already knelt at Cora’s side. She’s prone on the ground, blinking absently toward the darkened sky.

“Did you find her?” I ask, shoving the others out of my way. I crouch beside Cora’s head, tilting her so she’s resting against the stone wall, rather than the floor.

“Yes,” she says. Her words tremble as she looks at me. “She’s with them, Master. My people.”

I stagger backward. My heart seizes, pulsing too fast, squeezing like it might explode. I clutch my chest, as if to hold it in place. I’m being shredded from the inside out, and I don’t know how to stop it. I don’t know how tofixit.

“No,” I whisper. My voice is hoarse, cracking like a child’s.

Oskar has doomed us all. He is punishing our entirekind for showing him and Freja mercy. For giving them a chance.

I am back in front of him, kicking his shins until both legs are shattered. Blood trails from his pant legs, and still, I don’t stop. I scream as his body breaks at my touch, as a piece of my soul shatters for the man I thought I knew.

I force myself to stop. With a hand on my statue, I take ragged breaths and close my eyes. I’m wasting time—time Grace doesn’t have.

“Don’t let him leave,” I say, turning back to my followers. They stare with wide, stunned expressions. “Restrain him by any means necessary.”

“Yes, Master,” Beatrice says. Then, “What are you going to do now?”

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