Memories begin to lift away in shimmering fragments, each one dissolving into drifting motes of purple and fading gold as she peels them from me with surgical calm.
The night I crashed my car.
The first time I saw the clubhouse.
The way the fractured crystal dome caught firelight.
I fight it anyway, clawing at the memories as they slip through my grasp.
Raze’s name unraveling first, letters scattering like sparks caught in a violet wind. His face follows, edges blurring, glacialblue eyes fading into empty light. The weight of him over me. The heat that finally replaced ice when he stopped holding back.
All of it pulled away, drawn into her waiting hand like breath stolen from my lungs.
Gone.
Evaporating like dreams burned away by morning, leaving only the hollow certainty that something sacred has been taken… and I now no longer know what it was.
“Stop!” Scar appears between us, vampire speed carrying him faster than the witch’s magic can compensate for, and his hand wraps around her wrist with enough force to make ancient bones creak. “You’ve taken enough! Let her keep something…anything—”
The witch doesn’t even look at him. Her free hand gestures once, casually, and Scar freezes mid-step. Not ice, pure magical force locking every muscle in place until he’s trapped in the space between heartbeats, suspended by power that makes his five centuries of existence feel like an eyeblink in comparison.
Through smoke and falling debris, I see the other brothers trying to reach me. Maul’s werewolf form surges forward only to be driven back by another gout of residual flame that ignites where Raze stood minutes ago. Rhett and Bennett both move in perfect synchronization for once in their eternal existence, divine light and hellfire combining to try and break through the witch’s defenses, only to bounce off invisible barriers like children throwing pebbles at a fortress wall.
“Move, you idiots!” Scar’s voice cuts through despite being frozen, desperation bleeding into every syllable. “Get her out of here before—”
But it’s too late.
The last memory fractures and falls away…
Scar’s face, the brothers’ names, the feeling of belonging to something larger than myself, even while technically remaininga prisoner. All of it dissolving into static that fades to gray that fades to nothing, leaving behind only the hollow certainty that I’ve lost something irreplaceable without being able to name what it was.
The last thing I see before darkness claims me completely is the crystal dome in the center of the club room.
Empty.
Shattered.
The flame that burned inside it for three centuries vanished into the afternoon sky on wings of fire and rage, leaving nothing behind except scorched stone and the ashes ofcontentmentthat almost,almosttook root before pride and ancient law burned it all to the ground.
Then even that image dissolves.
And I remember nothing.
Except blackness.
Chapter Eighteen
ROXY
Dragged upward through a fog of heaviness and ache, I surface slowly. My fingers twitch first, a small, uncertain movement that sends a ripple of pain up my arm. My throat feels raw, like I’ve been screaming or breathing smoke, and when I try to swallow, it burns.
Light presses in through my eyelids. Too bright. I squint, lashes fluttering as the world sharpens in painful increments. White bleeds into shape above me, flat, endless,wrong. The ceiling comes into focus, sterile and unforgiving, while fluorescent lights hum overhead, a thin, mechanical whine that burrows into my skull.
I try to move and regret it instantly. Every muscle screams in protest, a chorus of deep, bruised pain that steals the breath from my lungs. My body feels heavy, uncooperative, like it belongs to someone else entirely.
Then footsteps approach.
A shape resolves at my side, soft-soled shoes and pale fabric, and then a face leans into my line of sight. The woman’s smile is practiced, gentle in a way that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.