Page 37 of Incoronate
Please don’t die.
I wanted to tell them it was okay. That I wasn’t afraid. But the words wouldn’t come anymore. My tongue felt thick and useless, my throat constricted by whatever toxins were spreading through my veins.
When things deteriorated, Trace became my voice. He answered questions when I couldn’t. Reassured them when my body was too heavy to manage more than a blink or a breath. When Gabriel asked if I needed anything, Trace answered. ‘She’s okay. Just tired.’ When Tessa whispered thatshe loved me, Trace relayed my response. ‘She loves you too. She says stop crying; she’s not dead yet.’
A weak smile from my sister. And then she was gone again.
Trace’s voice had managed to stay calm throughout, even when I could feel how tightly wound he was beneath it. How scared he was. How helpless. One hand never left me while the other combed slow, patient paths through my hair, over and over, like he was afraid of what would happen to both of us if he stopped.
The motion soothed some of the panic in my chest, even with the soulmate bond humming steadily between us, bright with emotions neither of us could fully hide or quiet. I knew he was feeling everything. The exhaustion. The fear. The anger I kept tamped down because it hurt too much to let it loose.
And he felt the whispers too.
All throughout my decline, they never stopped. Sometimes they were distant, like voices echoing down a long corridor. And other times they surged, sudden and loud, overlapping each other as they clawed at the edges of my thoughts. A constant stream of pleas and promises and commands I wanted to follow but couldn’t. Always pressing closer, always testing the cracks, reminding me what I needed to do.
Reminding me that they were still there.
At one point, the pull hit hard enough that my body responded before my mind could catch up. The call crashed over me in a wave, sudden and overwhelming, drowning out everything else.The Son of Perdition. I needed to find him. To destroy him. The compulsion seized my muscles, trying to force me upright.
Trace’s hand came down on my shoulder before I’d even lifted my head.
“Easy,” he murmured, guiding me back down with barely any effort at all. “You’re not going anywhere.”
The spell rot had stolen my strength along with everything else. I couldn’t have fought him even if I’d wanted to.
And I didn’t want to.
That was the one mercy in all of this. The one silver lining to the corruption eating me alive from the inside out. I was too weak to hunt. Too weak to hurt the one person I was desperate to protect.
And because of that, the baby was safe from me.
For now, at least.
I let that thought comfort me as I drifted again, Trace’s fingers never pausing their rhythm through my hair. The bond pulsed between us, as constant as a heartbeat.
“I’ve got you,” he whispered every so often. “I’m not letting go.”
I was halfway back under, Trace’s fingers still moving through my hair, when the sound of the front door opening pulled me back.
It was distant at first, muffled by the walls between us and the exhaustion weighing down on me, but it cut through the fog in my head like a bell. Everyone in the room went deathly still. Even Trace’s hand paused mid-stroke, his whole body going rigid as the footsteps echoed down the hall toward us.
Using every morsel of strength I had left, I forced my eyes open just as the sound of other footsteps registered. Lighter. Multiple sets again. Two, maybe three pairs of feet moving in synchronized rhythm half a step behind the first pair.
Dominic was back, and he brought company.
My heart kicked against my ribs as he finally stepped into view, his long black coat still on, his expression unreadable.He didn’t look at anyone else in the room. His gaze went straight to me, and for a split second, something fierce and terrified flared in his eyes before he masked it again.
Gabriel rose from his chair. “What did you do?” he asked, sounding worried and angry in equal measure.
Dominic didn’t answer him. Instead, he stepped aside.
The Roderick sisters appeared in the doorway like apparitions conjured straight out of a convoluted fever dream—tall, unmoved, and radiating a power I could feel halfway across the room. Their presence instantly filled the space the way smoke filled a closed room, invasive, inescapable, and heavy with the promise of ruin. Even the air seemed to tighten around them, the whole room drawing inward as though it recognized something old and dangerous the rest of us were still trying to put a name to.
Anita stood in the center of her sisters, her flame-red hair twisted into something elegant and severe at the nape of her neck. Her gaze swept the room with cool detachment, the barest hint of amusement tugging at the corners of her mouth, as though our desperation was little more than a mild curiosity.
To her left was Annabelle, blonde and immaculate, her posture relaxed to the point of disdain. She looked at us the way one might look at something already beneath consideration, already dismissed.
And finally, to her right, Arianna. The one who didn’t know how to stay dead. Her dark hair was pulled back into a simple ponytail, her amber eyes locking onto mine with immediate, unsettling focus. There was something knowing in that look. Something that already knew how this was all going to end.
