Page 11 of Incoronate
Mine.
My feet moved without conscious thought, carrying me forward across the grounds. The fog parted for me as I walked, the pull strengthening with every step I took until the urgency felt less like compulsion and more like coming home.
“Sister.” Famine’s voice carried across the space between us, his pitch-black eyes gleaming under the moonlight as they tracked my approach. “You’ve kept us waiting.”
I didn’t answer. Words felt unnecessary. I reached the horse and placed my hand against its neck, caressing it once as warmth spread up my arm at the contact. It lowered itself instinctively, waiting for me to mount it.
Before I could lift myself, movement erupted behind me, drawing my attention over my shoulder. Dominic and Trace exploded from the house, their eyes burning into me from across the grounds. The spell had dissipated far faster than I’d anticipated, but I didn’t have a chance to question it.
Dominic was beside me before I could react, his hand clamping down on my arm and yanking me back in one vicious pull that nearly took me off my feet.
“Let me go,” I seethed, my voice low and deadly.
“Not a chance, angel lips.” His grip tightened as his eyes blazed with challenge.
“Hold her,” growled Trace as he blurred past us, heading straight for Famine.
The Horseman’s expression darkened with something pleased and wicked. Power cracked through the air as the two of them collided, the impact shuddering through the ground beneath my feet.
Trace threw everything he had into the first strike, but Famine caught his fist with ease. The Horseman moved with brutal speed, faster and stronger than he’d been before, his strikes landing like blows from a war hammer. Famine’s knee drove into Trace’s stomach, doubling him over before sending him sprawling into the fog with a violent backhand that nearly took his head clean off.
The Power of Four.
I could feel it then, the surge rippling outward from me and pouring into him and the others. Magnifying every part of him with a strength he’d never had before. He overtook Tracewith terrifying ease, slamming him to the ground repeatedly and pinning him there as though he weighed nothing at all.
Dominic let out a low growl and then released me, blurring past me to back Trace up, but I already knew it wouldn’t be enough. They were outmatched and overpowered.
Blow after blow, Famine moved with savage force, his hits fluid and destructive and impossible to track. He caught Dominic by the throat mid-lunge and twisted. The crack echoed across the grounds like a dry branch snapping under a boot as Dominic’s body went limp in Famine’s grip.
I didn’t so much as blink as I watched Famine toss Dominic’s listless body onto the fog-covered grass beside us.
Trace stumbled to his feet, blood streaming from his nose and soaking the front of his shirt. He charged again, desperation overriding strategy, but without Dominic to create openings or cover his flanks, he had no chance at all. He was completely exposed and on his own.
Famine intercepted him easily, smashing him down onto the concrete hard enough to crack bone. And this time, Trace didn’t get back up. His head lolled to the side as his eyes found mine across the distance. He wasn’t asking for help. He didn’t even look angry. He just looked resigned, as though he’d already accepted what was about to happen.
“Run,” he pleaded, mouthing the word more than speaking it.
I gave a small, disappointed shake of my head. Even now, broken and bleeding out beneath Famine, he still didn’t understand. He was the one who needed saving, not me. I was exactly where I was meant to be.
The Horseman reached behind him for the blade strapped to his back, a near mirror-image of my Sword of Angelus. They were the only weapons on earth capable of permanentlyending any supernatural creature, good or bad. No Cinderdust needed. No chance of ever returning. It was almost poetic the way something that was forged for slaughter could be so beautiful to look at.
I drew closer as he raised the sword high in the air and held it suspended above Trace’s heart. I could feel the Horseman savoring the moment. Feeding off it like a starved beast.
Trace closed his eyes, shutting out the last flash of cobalt blue from my world. A strange, painful tug pulled at my chest as I watched him brace for the blade. It was barely anything at first. Just a small, hairline fracture splitting open somewhere deep inside me. Somewhere that was still mine.
But it was enough.
The soulmate bond surged into the opening, pulsing harder with every passing second, widening the crack until it was too wide to ignore. It clawed its way up through the haze, slashing at my insides as it fought to break free of the compulsion. To remind me who I really was. Of who I really loved.
Trace and Dominic.
The other halves of my soul.
Heat burst in my chest, white-hot and unrelenting, burning through the fog and the certainty and the pull that had wrapped itself so completely around my will that I couldn’t see anything else anymore. Love, pure and real and more powerful than any spell ever cast, came roaring back up to the surface, dragging me with it kicking and screaming until I could feel everything again.
“Stop!” The word ripped out of me, raw and frantic. “Don’t!”
Famine’s cold, dark eyes lifted to mine. “The reckoning is upon us, sister.” The blade caught the moonlight as he tilted it for the strike. “There is no stopping it now.”
