Page 13 of Incoronate
He needed to feed again.
I could see it in the tension of his jaw, in the way he kept curling and uncurling his fists at his sides.
He’d fed the moment we came back inside, but his body was still healing, still adjusting, still trying to repair what Famine had done to it. The newness of his transformation made everything harder to regulate. Made his emotions run too hot and his instincts too raw. Every few passes, his attention snapped back to me, checking, cataloguing, making sure I was still there. That I was still myself.
Before I could think it all the way through, I opened my mouth to offer myself up. “I—”
My voice was swallowed by the sound of Gabriel striding into the kitchen, already scanning the room before he’d even fully crossed the threshold. My sister was still fast asleep upstairs, blissfully unaware of the chaos that hadunfolded just outside the estate’s walls while Gabriel had been downstairs in the basement with Jacqueline again.
Pausing at the entranceway, his eyes moved over me from my jacket to my trembling bloody hands to the way I couldn’t quite meet anyone’s eyes for more than a second, and his expression instantly turned to stone.
“What happened?” he asked as he crossed the room to me.
“I…they…” I shook my head, unsure how to answer him because I still didn’t fully understand it myself. “The voices. They came back.”
He stepped closer, his gaze briefly dropping to my hands. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” I said, knowing that he was referring to my physical wellbeing and not to my emotional state, which was altogether a completely different story.
He still didn’t look convinced, though there was no surprise there. Gabriel had always been like that, protective in a way he tried to disguise as practicality, caring in a way he refused to admit. It was easier for him to keep that distance, to pretend his concern was tactical rather than personal. But I always saw through it anyway.
“It overtook her, brother.” For the first time tonight, I saw a chink in Dominic’s armor. A small sliver of worry that gave way to just how much he thought was at stake. Of how afraid he was for me. Orofme. “There was no stopping her. They had absolute control of her.”
Gabriel’s expression went dangerously still. When he looked back at me, something terrible had broken through his mask. Something that looked a lot like fear. “And the Horseman?”
“Dead,” answered Trace from across the room. He’d finally stopped pacing and had his arms folded along his chest, observing my conversation with Gabriel, but there wasnothing relaxed about his stance. Every muscle in his body looked coiled tight, ready to spring into action at the slightest provocation.
Dominic and Trace went on to tell Gabriel the rest of what had happened while I listened numbly. The white horse waiting for me in the fog, pristine and saddled. Famine’s increased strength from the activation of the Power of Four, the way he’d moved with a brutal efficiency that hadn’t been there before. The fight that had nearly ended with Trace’s permanent death and with Dominic’s neck snapped and his body thrown aside like discarded waste.
Gabriel listened without interruption, his posture rigid and his jaw clamped down tight. I could see the tension radiating through him, the sheer amount of effort it took to stay still, to keep his expression even when everything underneath it was anything but.
When they finished, the kitchen fell into a thick, uncomfortable silence. The kind that spoke volumes and made it feel like it might suffocate us all if someone didn’t break it soon.
Trace uncrossed his arms and pushed off the wall. “Look, for all we know, that’s the end of it,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck like he wasn’t sure he believed it himself. “They needed the Power of Four. Without Famine, they’re down to three. Maybe killing him broke the connection for good.”
Gabriel didn’t respond immediately, but I could tell he was thinking it over. Weighing the possibility against everything else we knew. A small, stubborn spark lit up inside me at his silence, clinging to the possibility that maybe, just maybe, there was hope that this nightmare might be over.
“Unless they only needed the Power of Four to be activated,” reasoned Dominic before taking another slow slip from his glass.
“Meaning what?” Trace’s frown deepened.
“Meaning the anointment is already done. Their powers have already been activated.” Dominic’s gaze shifted between Gabriel and Trace, then settled on me with an intensity that made my skin prickle. “There’s every possibility that Famine’s death changes nothing at all, other than removing a player from the board.”
I swallowed roughly as they all turned to look at me at once.
“Are you still hearing them now?” asked Gabriel, his eyes bouncing over my features as though he could pull the answer out of my face before I gave it. “Anything at all?”
I focused inward, searching for any whisper or trace of the presence that had wrapped itself around my thoughts so completely just an hour ago. I reached into the silence where the voices had been, where they’d burrowed in and made themselves at home, and found nothing.
“No,” I answered honestly. “It’s quiet again.”
But even as I said it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the silence didn’t mean the connection was broken. Only that it was dormant. Waiting…
Gabriel nodded carefully, still watching me as he considered it. “That’s a good sign then,” he said, though there was no real conviction behind it. It sounded more like a passing observation than any kind of reassurance.
“So what do we do in the meantime?” asked Trace point-blank. “Just sit around and hope for the best?”
“For now, yes,” replied Gabriel. “We don’t have enough information to do anything else. Until we know whether the connection held or broke with Famine’s death, all we can do is wait and see which way it goes.”
