Page 62 of A Throne of Blood and Ice

He pulls his hand from mine, leaving his phantom touch behind. When he hands me the vial, I knock it back in one go, hoping the foul liquid will bypass my tongue.

It doesn’t. Instead, it hits me with exactly the taste one might expect from an antidote made of powdered star and burnt hair.

The burnt hair sort of overpowers everything else. Everything but the texture, which is inordinately clumpy.

“Can you taste the magic?” Nox teases when I gag.

“If that’s what magic tastes like, add it to my list of foods I’ll be secretly feeding to the pets at dinner when no one’s watching,” I say with a cough.

The liquid certainly doesn’t feel like magic. The only sensation that’s currently rushing through my blood is the squirming sort, and I’m fairly certain that’s just a byproduct of the taste and the absurd concentration of lumps.

“How long until we know if it’s worked?” It didn’t occur to me until just now that there might not be any outward signs of the parasite working its way out of my system. That we might have to wait until the next full moon to know whether it’s really gone. A thought settles over me like ice water in the middle of a blizzard. “Nox, what are we going to do when it separates itself from me? How are we going to contain it?”

He frowns, which I find disconcerting. Surely the genius Nox thought of this beforehand.

I mean, I certainly didn’t, but I’m not the one employed to think up magic recipes either.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t think of that?” I say, to which he runs his fingers through his hair again and lets out a measured breath.

“I might have been so enamored with freeing you from its influence that the thought failed to cross my mind.”

My heart races and panic sets in. “Well, we have to prepare something.” I rifle through random containers on the desk. “A box, a vial with a stopper, a trunk with a lock and key, something.”

“We don’t know what form the magic will take once it separates itself from you,” Nox says, which is totally unhelpful.

I go to tell him as much, but I find the words get stuck in my throat.

In fact, even the air gets stuck in my throat. A sharp pain jabs at my chest, but I can’t even bring myself to gasp.

The last thing I remember is the horror on Nox’s face and the shattering of glass at my feet as I drop the vial in my hand.

And then everything is nothing at all.

CHAPTER20

NOX

Blaise falls and all I can see is white.

White in her pale, colorless skin.

White in the froth that bubbles from her lips.

White in her eyes as they roll back in her head.

White in the spots that scatter across my vision.

White in the snow and Zora’s fading laughter.

I at least have the wherewithal about me to catch her before her skull cracks against the stone floor. Her body goes limp in my arms, froth leaking off the shirt I let her borrow and onto my chest. I lower her to the ground.

It’s then that convulsions ripple through her, jerking her limbs this way and that as she lets out a moan that rattles my world.

“Gunter…” My voice is dry and cracked and barely makes a sound at first. “Gunter!”

What have I done?

Horror hollows out my chest. What have I done?

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