His eyes flutter open. They’re wild and lost, trying to focus on my face. Blood trickles down his lips on either side of his cheeks, and he gives me a grimacing bloody smile that’s worthy of a vampire. “Good to s-see your f-face in the . . . end, Sephy.”
“You’re not fucking dying on my watch, Rirth. Stop being such a donkey anddrinkthis stuff.” I reach into another pocket and find another Silverblood vial—
Crash.
Another broken container as he smacks it out of my hand.
Frustration wells inside me. I want to scream.Good thing I have ten of these fucking things from Jinneth.“I can do this all night, fuckhead.”
“Valenthia . . . is dead.”
I blink across at the ash-swept floor. My rage subsides momentarily. “I gathered. Good work.”
“. . . And . . . Cullard?” he croaks.
Then my heart is back in my neck. “C-Cullard?” I stammer. “He was in here?”
Rirth glances down at the dagger in his belly, chuckling, coughing, and spitting up more blood.
Fuck, he doesn’t have long.“We can talk about this later!”
“. . . Had whelps with him . . . Seph.”
“Drink the fucking Silverblood!” I scream in his face. Tears run unbidden down my cheeks now.
He laughs at me. The fuckerlaughs, even as he’s dying, directly in my face. “Let it . . . always be known . . . Seph. I am no . . . traitor . . . to my kind. And I fucking . . .hate. . . bloodsucker motherfuckers.”
He spits the last words, then releases a deep breath I know might be one of his last. The effort to speak looks excruciatingly painful, and all I can do is sigh heavily, rest his head in my lap, and run a hand down his sweaty pate.
Then it comes to me. He thinks the Silverblood is going to turn himintoa vampire.That must be it!“Oh, you foolish, foolhardy, brave idiot.”
His brow furrows, twitching. He jerks from a painful spasm somewhere on his mortally wounded body.
“You’re more like me than you care to admit, Rirth. We’re both bullheaded, true. More importantly, we hate vampires . . .” I lean down so I can whisper into his ear, “. . . yet we managed to fall in love with them.” When his eyes blink in confusion, I smile. “Don’t forget how happy Palacia makes you, old friend.” My face hardens. “So stop being a fucking idiot—”
Pop!I uncork another vial of Silverblood.
“—and drink this.”
Chapter 51
Garroway
Sephania stumbles out of the cathedral. Her four mates are upon her instantly. Her cheeks are dried with tears. She’s wrapping her arms in her tunic, as if hugging herself, trying to hide from the horrors she’s seen in that unholy church.
“The Silverblood didn’t take hold,” she croaks, shaking her head numbly.
We embrace her. It’s all we can do as she tells the story—finishing with information that Archpriest Cullard is on the loose, somehow escaped from the cathedral. And he took human children with him.
The rage inside me is enough to swallow me whole. Enough to match Vallan’s own bloodrage, when the big brute is at his worst.
“The last name on your list . . .” I mutter under my breath.
Sephania looks at me askance. “I never put him on the list I gave you, cub.”
“You didn’t need to, little honey badger.”
The others don’t know what we’re talking about.