Page 125 of All the Devils are Here

“What you’ve done is your own making, Prospero. When you let your desperation eclipse your knowledge, you burned your humanity away and bound it to me. Pulling on the only source of power you could find to keep yourself alive. I cannot take back what was freely given to you, but I can take back what was stolen from me.”

Prospero laughed. I knew the sound. He thought he’d won because his power was back in his hands and his immortal form was whole once more. But I wouldn’t count on it. Meg was practically glowing with delight and satisfaction inside my chest. I couldn’t stop my own smile because of it.

“If you could take it back then why haven’t you?” He asked. “You expect me to believe that for centuries you simply existed? Hating me? When you could have taken something from me? No. If you could have, you would have done it.”

Meg smiled, and it was like the sun reversed its setting. “No, Prospero.” She walked toward him, and the air crackled with energy. “Magic is formless. As it should be. It cannot manifest things or resist them. It can only take and give. But magic given form?” She lifted a hand. “That could destroy the world. And yet, I would not, because of what I learned from you.”

“Get to the point,” he snarled. “If you’re going to push me off the ledge, do it. I’m immortal and you know it.”

“Yes,” she laughed, the double tone of the voice absolutely fucking terrifying. “You’re immortal. Nothing more than magic with a form. Soon to be formless.”

“What—”

She grabbed his neck, and his body began to crumble.Crumble. Like dust. First his feet and legs and rising quickly.

“Without your body you are like me. And like all those souls you surrendered on the altar of your arrogance. I had no choice but to accept them, and it would have been the same with you.

“I waited all these centuries to take it back, Prospero, because I wanted no part of you inside of me.”

Prospero gasped for breath and reached, but the magic held him so securely, there was no fighting it. I watched as the man who’d tormented me for a millennium simply disappeared, nothing left but the shimmer of magic that was his immortal soul.

“And now you are formless,” The Island said. Magic swirled around his soul, and it sank into the earth. “And it is where you will stay.”

“Where did you put him?” Laurent asked.

“Where I have lived all this time,” she said. “The island’s heart. It is a fitting end for him.”

“An end?” I asked. Prosperowasimmortal. He wasn’t going anywhere.

“Yes,” the island turned and smiled at me. “An end. But first, a beginning.”

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

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MEGHAN

My body walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down into the water, and I knew no fear. All my mates tensed, but it wasn’t the island’s idea to kill me. Far from it.

Turning back, she looked at the four of them.

“Four pieces of life,” it spoke. “One from each domain. You have given me three.”

She gestured to Ariel, Trin, and Ban.

“Only one remains.”

The island receded into the background, and I gasped, falling forward as it gave me control of my body once more. Laurent caught me. Clung to me. I held him right back. “I love you,” I told him. “I love you, and if you ever try to do that again, I will cut your fucking heart out myself.”

He grinned and kissed me. “Noted, sweetheart.”

The others were closing in, taking me in their arms. Everything was brighter. Richer colors and scents in the midst of all this power. But I also felt that I wasn’t meant to hold it.

It was all right for now, but not for long.

“She means the bond?” Trin asked.

When I’d first dreamed of the island, there had been four lights. Just now when it had pulled me away from them, there was only one left. Four pieces of life. Four hearts that were mine. Life meant far more than a beating heart.

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