Page 155 of A Reign of Roses
I dove for Mari. Kane braced his entire body around us.
No, not cannons. Mari—
Mari’s eyes had rolled back in her head, only the ghostly whites of her eyes showing, her cheeks hollowing out, her body levitating—
“What’s happening?” I yelled over the whipping, swirling wind.
Griffin lunged for her, and after a moment, with an incensed grimace, released her calf with a hiss. I watched him rub his fingers, singed as if he’d plunged them into a boiling pot.
Mari floated higher, lifeless, head hung like a ghost. And then she fell to the ground in a heap.
The wind halted.
Flakes of snow drifted down from where they hovered around her body in a column.
And on the ground—
My own gasp of horror sounded through the woods as Briar’s body decomposed before our very eyes. Fair skin became leathery and wrinkled, then paper-thin, then disintegrated altogether. Tendons shriveled, bones cracked. Until all that was left was dust.
The most powerful witch in history. Mari’s mentor. Our friend.
Gone, like smoke in wind.
Griffin was already kneeling, scooping Mari into his arms. Feeling her pulse and listening to her heart. When I cut my eyes sidelong to Kane, his dark brows were knotted across his forehead. “Is she—”
I could not endure losing Mari. I would—
“She’s fine,” Griffin breathed out in a rush. “She fainted.”
Kane looked to Griffin in silent question. And then, a rasped “You don’t think—?”
“Yes.” Griffin cut him off. “I do.” He looked down at Mari’s mass of curly copper hair. Her serene expression. Her pert nose and all its sweet freckles.
I thanked every Stone for the breath that funneled softly in and out of her lungs.
But Griffin’s warm, sea-green eyes…they brimmed with more than relief. Something else simmered there.
“What is it?” I asked, though some part of me knew. And knew in turn that I had to hear them say it. That I wouldn’t believe it until they said the words.
“Briar transferred the spell to Mari,” Kane said. “The one that kept her young.”
About a hundred thoughts slammed through my mind at his words. But chief among them, despite everything around us, was the look on Griffin’s face. It was hope wending through his eyes.
Hope that one day, if any of us made it out of this alive, and if they ever found their way to each other, they might not have varying lifespans to contend with.
We had lost everything. Dagan, Briar, Shadowhold, Kane’s and my future—
And with the sounds of clashing swords and zings of lighte, only more and more and more loss stood to follow, likely long before night swept over the keep.
But that—thathopeon Griffin’s face as he cradled Mari in his arms—that was one thing we had won.
43
Arwen
Snow fell, blanketing the raucoustumult of war in a veil of serene white. The Fae and mortal soldiers had razed at least half of the Shadow Woods between Lazarus’s encampment and the stone walls of Shadowhold.
The late afternoon had bled into a violent sunset. The cries of our people growing louder, the chants and roars of the would-be victors growing more sure. I swung my sword, threw out my lighte, protected those I could but—
