Page 133 of Librarian

Her voice cracks through the empty room, echoing off the domed ceiling, and I roll my eyes.

“I think I’ll survive.”

Kyrith’s arms wrap around my waist, her face resting against my back as she hugs me.

“I want to do it,” I tell her. “I want to cast the spell that kills him.”

She goes painfully still against me. I think she even stops breathing. “I would never ask you to use that magic.”

“You’re not. I’m telling you that’s what’s going to happen. He’s taken everything from me, and I?—”

She squeezes me tighter. “Pierce…this won’t bring Benny back.”

Kyrith’s not a necromancer. She’s never lived among them or seen how perverse their humour can become. So she can’t possibly understand how those words hit differently to someone like me. It kills me to know that my grandfather’s body is unaccounted for.

If I’d been able, I would’ve?—

I shut that train of thought down viciously, because Iwasthere. I could’ve done something. If Blanche hadn’t gotten in my way…

I’d probably be dead along with him.

The truth corrodes my anger like acid, leaving only despair.

I want to hate Blanche. It would make everything so much easier. But I can’t.

She was the only reason we even made it to his cell. Probably the only reason I didn’t get Lambert and Leo killed by attacking my mother in front of all those agents. We’d never have broken him out on our own. It would’ve taken months of planning for us to stand a chance.

We had hours.

In the end, time thwarted us. My grandfather died surrounded by people who cheered for his end, his soul siphoned away in the pursuit of more power. His final act was telling that sergeant to get me out of there. Saving me.Again.

Then his death was broadcast like a spectacle on every channel, so much so that the moment Lambert turned on the television, there he was. Light streaming out of his eyes andmouth. I know Leo numbed him, but it still looked like he was in pain.

Not knowing for certain whether he felt everything is one of the worst parts.

I couldn’t take it. I lost control.

I can’t even kill my mother for what she did.

Now the only blood family I have left is Anthea, and she’s marked for death by enforcement.

“I want to,” I insist, twisting in her embrace until my back is to the empty air. “They made me like this. They forged me into one of them, and now I’m going to wield that power to destroy him.”

Her huge parchment-coloured eyes sparkle with power and sympathy, and I roll mine a second time.

“Don’t pity me, darling. Use me. Everyone else does.”

The alternative is her learning necromancy, and Kyrith is the one thing in my life that hasn’t been ruined by dark magic.

She was almost killed by it twice.

She can design the spell, but I’ll be dead before I let her write it into her grimoire.

Her head is shaking as she steps away, leaving me colder for her loss. “I’ll help you get revenge, if that’s what you want, but no one is going to throw you at him?—”

Frustration bubbles in my gut, and I reach out, hand cupping the nape of her neck to stop her retreat.

“I’ll do it anyway.”