Balery said, “You need to hurry. Her lifeforce is dimming.”
Ellie told Lothaire, “Let’s give them privacy.”
“Are you kidding me?” the vampire scoffed. “I wouldn’t miss this for all the worlds!”
“Please, Leo.”
He grumbled, “Very well, hellbilly.”
The others left Munro alone with Kereny and madness. The bleeding edge. When he’d lost her in Quondam, he hadn’t yet loved her.
The need to fight for her overwhelmed him, as if the aggression from a lifetime’s worth of battles surged inside him.
Choking him.
Kereny laid her cold hand on his cheek, her big copper eyes glinting. “I know, Munro. I know how hard this is.” She could see his feral desperation? “But you can do this. I believe in you.”
Canna frighten my little mortal. Imbuing his words with confidence, he vowed to her, “Something is different from the time before: I’m going to give you everything I am, down to my verra soul. I hold nothing of myself back from you. Nothing, Kereny. So you must hold nothing back as well.”
Tears spilled down her cheeks. “Yes. We can do this . . . together.” Her hand fell away from his face.
He began to release his beast. Please, beast. Please, bring her back to us.
“That’s it, Munro.”
At a time like this, his psyche clamored for control. Instead, he ceded it to the creature inside him. No control, no rationality, no defying the odds to save the day. A warrior whose fight was finished, Munro could only . . .
Surrender.
Accept.
Trust.
So he did.
With a primal roar, his beast took over, leaving Munro to exist in the background. As the creature bared its fangs and eased down, Munro heard her heartbeat slowing. Beat-beat . . . beat-beat . . .
He expected the beast to deliver a frenzy of bites like the last time. Instead, it pierced her neck cleanly; she didn’t even cry out.
Snarling against her cool flesh, the beast injected its essence, a part of itself, through a single, solemn bite. The Lykae flame.
Kereny’s body fell limp. Beat . . . beat . . .
Silence.
Her final breath escaped her, carrying her last words: “I . . . love . . . you. . . .”
She died before he could say the words back.
FIFTY-SIX
Glenrial, Louisiana
“Return to me, Kereny.” Munro stroked his thumb over the rise of her cheekbone. “Come back to me.” Madness loomed as his anguished vigil continued on for a fifth night.
When he’d awaited her resurrection before, his heart had not been in play. Now he was all heart. Nothing but heart. And it was bleeding from a wound only Kereny could heal. . . .
He vaguely recalled Lothaire kicking them out of Dacia—“Newlings are outside pests”—and Stelian tracing them to Glenrial. Ben, Rónan, and the entire pack had gathered to help. But Munro had shaken his head, and everyone had butted the fuck out while he’d carried his dead mate into the lodge and to his bed.
He’d called Loa: “Bring your snake and your voodoo. Do whatever you bloody must.” She’d been unable to help Kereny. He’d contacted Mariketa—the leader of the House of Witches and mate to his cousin Bowen—and offered all he had and all he could steal. But Mariketa had told him, “I’m so sorry, Munro, but I can only heal the living. It’s up to her now.”
He’d even considered pleading to Dorada for that ring. But he couldn’t find her again, and her talisman wouldn’t retrieve the dead anyway.
So Munro had spent these days and nights discovering what gut-wrenching agony truly was. He’d pulled at his hair. He’d roared at Kereny; she’d promised him she would return! He’d curled up around her to keep her body warm. Rocked her. Fought his emotions and his beast.
Minutes were years. Hours were eons.
Though his bite mark showed no regeneration, she looked and smelled alive because that witchly stamp continued to work, and already his mind played tricks on him. At times, he thought he could hear her sigh. He would jerk upright, only to find her chest still.
At other times, he swore her pulse flickered. But whenever he pressed his lips to that sweetest butterfly flutter, only stillness greeted him—
“Bràthair, I came as soon as I heard.” A hand that looked exactly like his own appeared on his shoulder.
Munro dragged his gaze from Kereny. “Will? Are you really here?” His brother had never looked so healthy in his life. “Hallucination?”
“I’m here.” He glanced to Kereny and back. “Your mate will return to you. There’s time yet.”
“No mortal has ever resurrected past three days, not in all of the warlocks’ history. It’s been five.” She was out of time.
“Then she will set a record,” Will insisted. “I feel this. Good things are on the horizon for both of us.” Will’s eyes held no trace of bleakness, and he sounded optimistic about the future; definitely a hallucination. “Madadh told me everything about Quondam and the Forgotten.”
The warlock threat felt like it’d happened in another lifetime.
When Munro and Kereny had first arrived behind the boundary at Glenrial, he’d removed their cloaking cuffs and her mystical blade. It lay on the bedside table, awaiting her.
But she’s no’ coming back.
So he would find her in the ether of death and be with her there. Where your mate goes, you follow. He didn’t dare wait much longer. His beast would soon take over. If it rose up irretrievably, he wouldn’t be able to end his existence.
Will said, “Munro, let me be of service to you, as you were to me for all my life.”
“Service?” Only a pit of unnatural flames could help him now.
“I’ve forever asked myself one question: What would Munro do? And if our situations were reversed, you would be out fighting for my future. You’d be out fixing shite. Your mate will rise, and when she does, she’s going to need help.”
As much as he wanted his brother with him at the very end, Munro had to get rid of him. Otherwise, Will would try to prevent him from setting off for the Fyre Dragán—just as Munro had stopped Will.
“Aye, then,” Munro said. “We must have water from the Well of Souls in the rage demon realm.” Questionable sources swore it cured newling rabidity, but Munro had concluded it was merely another Lorean MacGuffin. “And we need Garreth’s cuff from the belly of a giant caiman in the Amazon.” Would that magic even work on a newling?