by Tracy Wolff
“You know the rules,” he says. “She cheated.”
“She did not cheat,” Hudson tells him. And neither says a word for a second, maybe more. “And I will find a way to heal her. She will rule the Circle one day.”
Cyrus turns pale and panicked at Hudson’s words, his eyes darting back and forth between us. “No gargoyle will ever rule the Circle again,” he tells us. “Just suggesting it is to invite genocide against your own species, Hudson.”
“No, that’s your trick. That’s what you brought to your people,” Hudson snaps back. “And to too many others. Besides, pretty soon you’ll be too busy healing to worry about who sits on the Circle and who doesn’t.”
“Healing from what? I’m—”
Hudson cuts him off with a wave of his hand.
And just like that, Cyrus screams in agony…as he seems to melt before my very eyes.
123
It All Comes
Crashing Down
“What was that?” I whisper, torn between trying to watch what happens to Cyrus and closing my eyes and resting my head against Hudson’s chest.
The closed eyes win, mostly because I’m so tired and everything hurts so much. But also because the little bit I just saw—Cyrus’s body literally caving in on itself like he imploded from the inside—might be the most terrifying thing I’ve ever witnessed.
“Nothing for you to worry about. The bastard’s bones will regrow…eventually,” Hudson answers softly and smooths the hair around my face. But when I lay my head on his chest and try to block out the stomach-churning pain, he tells me firmly, “Don’t go to sleep, Grace.”
“I don’t think vampire bites work the same way as concussions.” I drag each word from my screaming lungs, trying to make a joke so I can see Hudson smile one last time.
“Yeah, because that’s what I’m worried about,” he jokes back as he scoops me up into his arms and carries me across the field. “You having a concussion.”
Jaxon and Macy finally get to us, and Jaxon demands, “Let me have her,” but Hudson barely glances his way. He just keeps moving. He’s not fading, but he is striding out of the arena like a man on a mission.
The only thing he bothers to say is, “Push everyone back, make them leave this arena.”
I don’t know if Jaxon follows Hudson’s directions, but I no longer hear voices coming closer. Everything seems to be receding. Then again, that could be the poison working its way through my system.
“Grace, just hold on a little longer,” Macy tells me, her voice thick with tears. “We’ll figure this out. I swear, there has to be a spell, something. My dad is talking to all the witches and vampires on staff right now. They’re trying to find a way—”
She breaks off, unwilling to say what all of us are thinking, which is that it will take a lot more than a spell to save me now. Cyrus is too powerful, his bite too irrevocable. They can look all they want, but if what Hudson told me about his father the other night was true, they won’t find anything.
And much as I don’t want it to be true, the pain coursing through me right now says otherwise.
Still, I hate to see Macy like this. She’s devastated, her face crumpled and wet with tears she doesn’t even bother to try to stem. “It’s okay,” I soothe, because someone needs to. “You’re going to be okay.” I rub my hand against her arm, which is the only part of her I can reach.
“Where are you going?” Jaxon demands as Hudson continues to stride through the arena. “Where are you taking her?”
“I’ve got an idea,” he grinds out from between clenched teeth, his arms tightening around me. “It’s a long shot, but it’s better than sitting here waiting for her to die.”
The others wince, but I’m glad someone finally said it out loud. I’m going to die.
“What is it?” Macy whispers.
But Hudson isn’t listening anymore. Instead, he’s locked into the fury inside him, his wrath so great that it’s threatening to rise up and swallow us whole. I don’t know if the others can tell—his face is completely impassive—but I can feel it in the way he’s holding me. See it in his clenched jaw. Hear it in his ragged breathing and the too-fast pounding of his heart.
“It’s okay,” I try to tell him, but a stronger, deeper wave of pain chooses that exact moment to hit me, and I can’t stop myself from arching in his arms. From squeezing my eyes and fists and mouth shut as tightly as I can in an effort to stop the scream that wells in my throat.
“It’s not okay,” he growls as we finally step through the stadium doors into the snow and sleet.
The moment we do, there’s a wrenching sound behind us.
Macy gasps, her face going as white as the snow-capped mountains all around us. And a few seconds after that, the entire building starts collapsing in on itself. I watch over Hudson’s shoulder as wood and glass and stone and metal come tumbling down, the arena literally tearing itself apart piece by piece.
“What’s happening?” Macy squeaks out. “Jaxon, what are you doing?”
But Jaxon looks as ashen as she does as he shakes his head. “That’s not me.”
You don’t know what real power is.
Hudson’s words come back to me now, as does that moment when I was returning his powers to him—the moment when I realized just how infinite they really are.
Infinite enough to reduce his father’s bones to dust with the wave of a hand.
Infinite enough to tear down an entire stadium with barely a thought.
Infinite enough to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants.
And if Jaxon’s gasp is anything to go by, he knows it, too. Which means he also knows that Hudson has been telling me the truth all along. Because if he had been dead set on the murder and mayhem and genocide that Jaxon had believed was his plan two years ago, then it would have already happened. It would have been done with a flick of his fingers—a wave of his hand—and there would have been nothing anyone could have done to stop it. Jaxon would only have found out about it after it was a fait accompli.
Because that’s the kind of power Hudson wields.
And now his brother knows.
People start running out of the arena screaming, and still the structure continues to fall, huge pieces of it exploding into dust before they even hit the ground. Seats from the top of the stadium, chunks of the roof, fragments of stone from the outside wall. All crumbling away. All imploding into the smallest particles of dust, harmlessly floating to the ground.
I know what Hudson is doing. I can feel the fury coming off him in waves. He wants to tear down the arena where people sat back and watched Cole try to kill me. Watched Cyrus actually kill me. And they did nothing. But he’s not hurting them. I don’t even have to look to know he’s not. But he certainly is putting the fear of God into them, and honestly, I wouldn’t be lying if I said they might deserve it just a little.
The amount of power it takes to tear the arena down and hurt no one. The amount of control. I smile. The one thing his father tried to deny him, control of his abilities, he found a way on his own terms. And Cyrus would have seen it, too, if he’d only ever bothered to pay attention to his son. That day in the memory… Hudson destroyed everything in the room except his father.
It makes me wonder what else Hudson can do.
I was dead. Sort of.
Sort of? What does that mean?
It means a lot of what I’ve believed for the last weeks, months, has been a lie.
It means a lot of what I blamed Hudson for wasn’t his fault—or maybe didn’t even happen at all. That he tried to tell me several times only makes me feel worse.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask as he strides away from the arena and back toward the forest we came through less than two hours ago.
And God, it feels surreal to be here. To see how much everything has changed. And also h
ow nothing has. The pain is now so great, it’s reached some level that my body can’t even register anymore. A quiet calm settles over me as the pain recedes in soft waves, and all I see is Hudson. This moment. The last words we’ll ever share. And I want him to know. I want him to know that I see everything now. I see him.
“Tell you what?” he asks. “Not to go anywhere near my father? I’m pretty sure we covered that several times.”
“No,” I respond after swallowing the lump in my throat. “Why didn’t you tell me what a good person you are?”
Startled blue eyes find mine and our gazes lock, hold.
For a second, Hudson slows down so much that he nearly trips over his own feet while Macy and Jaxon demand to know what’s going on.
He doesn’t answer them. In fact, he doesn’t say anything at all—and neither do I. We just stare at each other as a strange understanding passes between us.
“We’ll talk about this later,” he tells me as he starts walking again.
“There isn’t going to be a later,” I answer quietly, “and you know it.”
He starts to say something, then breaks off. Swallows. Starts to speak again, then breaks off again.
As he struggles, explosions start going off around us. I drag my eyes away from his tortured blue ones in time to see a centuries-old tree turned to sawdust in the blink of an eye.
“Hudson—” I reach for his hand where it’s clutching my thighs, his arm beneath my knees, and cup my hand over his. “What are you doing?”
He shakes his head, doesn’t answer. More trees explode with every step he takes, the timberland around us turning to nothing, bark and roots and leaves just disappearing with each long stride. He’s destroying an entire forest in the blink of an eye, in an absolute and perfect rage.
“Hudson,” I whisper. “Please don’t be like this. There’s nothing you can do.”
Dozens more trees explode around us at that, and then finally, finally, he comes to a stop in the middle of a clearing he just made, a hundred trees—maybe more—gone with just a thought.
One corner of his mouth ticks up in a teasing grin. “Jeez, Grace, your belief in me is overwhelming as always.” But the humor never reaches his normally bright blue eyes, now turned nearly gray with the riotous storm of his emotions.
“It’s not about believing in you. It’s about the fact that I can feel your father’s venom moving through me. You can’t fix that.”
He squares his jaw. “You don’t have a clue what I can do.” He doesn’t say it to be mean. I know him now. He’s trying to convince himself.
“Maybe not. But I know—” I break off as another fresh wave of pain surges through me and I gasp. I must have been in the eye of the tempest earlier, and now the pain is buffeting against me in growing agony. I’m out of time.
“You don’t know anything,” he answers harshly, his storm-tossed eyes wet with more emotions than I can keep track of. “But you’re about to.”
124
Long Time, No Sea
“Give her to me,” Jaxon demands for the third or fourth time since Hudson picked me up, but it’s obvious Hudson couldn’t care less what Jaxon wants.
He keeps his eyes on mine for several beats, his gaze searching my face as I fight against the pain. I can tell he wants to ask me if I want to go. To Jaxon.
And he would hand me over. One word from me, and he would step aside. But I don’t even know what he’d be stepping aside from. We’ve barely tolerated each other for two weeks. And I was mated to Jaxon until two hours ago. So obviously I want to go to Jaxon.
But I don’t say anything. I can’t. Right now, I don’t know what I want.
Another wave of pain rolls through my body, and this time, I can’t swallow my scream.
“Don’t fight it,” he tells me in little more than a whisper. “Let the pain roll over you. Absorb it instead of fighting against it. It’ll make the next few minutes easier.”
I don’t argue with him—the pain is too overwhelming for that now—but I want to ask how he thinks I can just surrender to it when it feels like every nerve ending in my body is being dipped in lava…at the same time.
Before I can think of a way to explain that, Hudson leans over and deposits me gently—so, so gently—into Jaxon’s waiting arms.
It feels like coming home.
Despite how worn out he is, Jaxon takes me with ease, holding me steadily against his chest for long seconds before carrying me a little away from Hudson and Macy. Then he sinks down onto the snow and cradles me in his lap.
“It’s okay,” he whispers as he strokes my still unruly curls back from my face. “You’re going to be okay.” But I can see in his eyes that he knows the truth. Unlike Hudson, Jaxon understands that I’m already gone.
He doesn’t like it, but he gets it.
Next to Hudson, the ground makes a sound like it’s screaming, and we all turn to watch him turn the snow to vapor as he splinters the rocky ground in front of him wide open.
“What are you doing?” Macy demands. “I thought you were going to help Grace. I thought—”
Hudson holds a hand up and she freezes, which is ridiculous because he won’t hurt her and yet totally understandable, considering she just watched him vaporize a stadium and a shit ton of trees all in the space of ten minutes.
As we watch, the dirt that was frozen beneath the snow explodes up and out. But Hudson barely pays it any attention as he digs deeper, deeper, deeper. The sounds get worse, the ground grinding against itself as he literally carves through granite with a thought.
“What’s he doing?” Macy whispers.
“I have no idea,” Jaxon answers, still watching his brother with bewildered eyes.
I don’t know, either, but I know that whatever it is, it’s his long-shot idea. And because I can’t stand the thought of hoping, of thinking that Hudson might somehow find a way to save me only to have my hopes dashed at the last possible second, I turn to Jaxon, who looks as exhausted and traumatized as I feel.
I hate it—hate it for him, and I hate it for us. Maybe that’s why I give him the closest thing to a smile that I can manage and softly ask, “Tell me the pirate joke?”
“What pirate joke?” he asks at first, still distracted by what his brother is doing right over our shoulders.
“You know exactly what pirate joke I’m talking about.” I groan as another wave of pain rolls through me.
“The pirate joke from the hallway?” Jaxon says in disbelief. “You want to hear that now?”
“I’ve always wanted to know the punch line. And I’m probably not going to have another chance, so—”
His dark eyes fill with tears as he stares down at me. “Don’t say that. Don’t you fucking say that to me, Grace.”
“Tell me the joke,” I urge him again, because I can’t stand to see the pain in his eyes. I’d take it if I could, take it all into me and away from this broken boy who’s already suffered so much. “Please.”
“Fuck, no,” he says with a scowl that almost—almost—battles back the tears. “You want to hear the punch line of that joke? You don’t die, okay? You stick around and I’ll tell you next week. I promise.”
Another wave of pain hits me, and this one is accompanied by a cold that chills every part of me. Together, they overwhelm me, nearly take me under. I struggle against it, not forever but for now. For a few more minutes to spend looking into Jaxon’s beloved face.
“I’d really like that,” I tell him after a second. “But I don’t think it’s possible.”
I raise a hand to his cheek, run my thumb back and forth over the scar he’s spent so much time despising and trying to hide. “You know that you’re going to be okay, right?” I tell him.
“Don’t say that. Damn it, Grace, you don’t get to talk about dying as easily as brushing your teeth in the morning and
then say that everything is going to be okay!”
“I love you,” I tell him softly, wiping away one of the tears that fall in an endless streak down his cheeks. And I mean it. Maybe not in the same way I did when I first came to Katmere, but in a new way. Maybe even a better one.
“Please don’t leave me.” It’s a whisper from the deepest, most broken part of him—from the little boy who’s already lost so much—and it nearly shatters me.
I shake my head a little, because I won’t promise him that. I won’t be just one more person who treats him like he’s somehow more than a god and less than a person at the same time.
So I do the only thing I can in this situation, the only thing we still have time for. I smile at him and ask, “What did the beach say to the tide when it came in?”
He just stares at me, seconds ticking by as silence stretches hopelessly between us. In fact, he waits so long to answer that I’ve almost decided that he’s not going to. But then he takes a breath and blows it out slowly, so, so slowly. And says, “I have no idea.”
Of course he doesn’t. He’s terrible at these, but he indulges me anyway. Which is why I’m grinning as widely as I can manage when I answer. “Long time no sea.”
Jaxon laughs, but in the middle, it turns into a sob and he buries his face against my neck. “I’m sorry, Grace,” he whispers to me as hot tears slide against my skin. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not.” I comb my fingers through the silky coolness of his hair. “I’ll never be sorry for having found you, Jaxon, even if I didn’t get to keep you as long as I would have liked.” I pull his mouth down to mine, press my lips to his. And nearly sob myself when he whispers, “I love you,” against my mouth.
Behind us, Hudson finally stops doing whatever it is he’s doing to the land and takes a step toward me.
