Every Last Breath

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  was sharp, it was nothing compared to what Zayne must be feeling.

  And my grief over Sam still didn’t reach the heights of what Stacey had experienced. It seemed, that through all of this, I was just getting a taste of the consequences of what was happening, not the whole swallow.

  I had a feeling that would change, though, very soon.

  The ride to the seer’s house was awkward, because it started with a trip to the local grocery store.

  The Perdue chicken was tucked between Zayne and Stacey. The former was shooting daggers at the back of Roth’s head anytime I glanced back at him. Roth was on his third round of humming “Paradise City,” appearing oblivious to the death glare directed at him. I was trying to pretend like everything was dandy and totally not about seven levels of awkward, and Stacey looked like she needed a bucket of popcorn.

  When we finally pulled up in front of the old home with its wooden fence and stone walls near the Manassas Battlefield, I was ready to dive-bomb out of the car.

  “I think it’s best that you two stay in the car.” Roth turned off the ignition, and then twisted back, eyeing our tagalongs. “Tony is peculiar. We don’t need to piss him off.”

  Zayne glanced at the chicken. “You have to bring him a chicken?”

  “Eh...” Roth didn’t answer.

  “He’s really a kid?” Stacey asked, glancing at the house. A curtain swayed across a window near the door. “Like a kid, kid?”

  “Yeah, he’s probably only nine or ten,” I explained, reaching for the door.

  “Geez,” murmured Stacey, slowly shaking her head.

  “You two going to be okay here?” I hesitated.

  Roth snorted. “I’m sure they’ll be just fine.”

  I shot him a look, and he turned an innocent stare on me while he reached behind him. “Someone hand me the chicken?”

  It was Stacey who handed it over. “This is so weird.”

  “You have no idea,” I muttered.

  Roth waited for me on the other side of the Mustang, lightly placing his hand on my lower back. “You feeling okay?” he asked as we stepped through the gate and passed the neatly trimmed bushes.

  “Just a little sore,” I admitted, because saying I was 100 percent fine wouldn’t be believable.

  Dipping his head, he brushed his lips over my forehead before we climbed the stairs. I glanced back at the car and found that Zayne had not stayed inside as instructed. He was standing beside the car, his back to the house. He was right there, but looking at him felt like I was seeing a recorded image of someone. He was there but not.

  The door opened before we knocked, drawing my attention. The faint blue aura faded, revealing Tony’s mother. She was wearing a white cardigan this time, but the pearls I remembered were still clasped around her neck.

  “I’m still not happy to see you,” she said.

  Roth raised a shoulder. “And I’d say I’m sorry, but I still wouldn’t mean it.”

  Good Lord, not this again.

  “Let them in,” came the voice from behind the woman.

  She stepped aside and there he was. First I saw the white glow around him, brighter than what clung to Zayne. A pure soul, totally rare. The urge I usually felt at seeing a pure soul was minimal, almost forgettable. The boy was all blond curls and had the face of a cherub. He was adorable—with the exception of the white pupils in the middle of his cobalt eyes.

  Because those eyes were still freaky.

  Tony glanced at the grocery bag Roth held. “Another chicken? Are you serious?”

  “Hey. I hear Perdue is the best,” Roth replied.

  “And I hear Tyson is not that bad, either.” Sighing, the pint-size seer gestured at his mom. “Take it.”

  The woman, who was probably well versed in the bizarreness, took the bag. “It’s Taco Tuesday. This will have to wait.”

  “You bet it will.” The seer motioned us to follow him. The house smelled of pine and apples, making me yearn for Christmas. “You know, you could’ve allowed your friends to come in. Instead they’re out there, being all broody and probably creeping out the neighbors.”

  “They’re probably the least creepy thing your neighbors have seen,” Roth pointed out.

  “Depends on what you think is creepy, eh?”

  I smacked Roth’s arm when he opened his mouth, obviously forming yet another retort; if I didn’t stop him, he never would. He shot me a look, but Tony let out a very childlike giggle.

  We followed him into the living room. There was a massive tree all decked out with ornaments with a mountain of presents already tucked under it. Another video game was paused on the TV, but this time it didn’t look like a medieval game. There was a car and what looked like a police officer chasing after it.

  Tony plopped down on a beanbag, and somehow he made that look like a throne. “I know why you guys are here.”

  “Of course,” I murmured, sitting down on the couch.

  He raised a blond brow as he glanced at Roth. “Just so you know, when you ended up chained in the fiery pits, I wasn’t laughing like I predicted.”

  Roth’s eyes narrowed at the reminder as he sat on the arm of the couch beside me.

  “Maybe just a low chuckle of amusement,” Tony added slyly.

  “Are you sure it wasn’t a high-pitched giggle of amusement?” replied Roth. “Since you haven’t hit puberty yet?”

  Oh dear.

  Tony lifted a chubby hand and flipped Roth off.

  “Ah, did I upset the wee, little baby—”

  “Roth,” I sighed, punching his leg lightly. “I can’t take you anywhere.”

  “Not true.” He winked at me. “I’m adaptable in any situation.”

  Tony propped his legs up on the coffee table, crossing them at the ankles. “While I think it’s great that you two have obviously come to terms with what you both are and your feelings for one another, I have better things to do than watch you two—”

  “Tony!” his mom’s voice rang out from somewhere in the house. “Get your feet off the coffee table now!”

  I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing as Tony rolled his weird eyes but did as he’d been told. His feet thumped off the hardwood floors. “You want to know how to kill the Lilin,” he said, staring balefully in Roth’s direction. “You know the rules. I cannot help one side over the other.”

  “Screw the rules,” Roth ordered.

  “Easy for you to say when it’s not your life that will be on the line,” the seer retorted. “The thing is, you both should already know the answer you seek.”

  “We know how to kill the Lilin,” I said, scooting forward on the cushion. “Stab it in the heart or decapitate it, and we almost succeeded with a stab to the heart, but—”

  “But you discovered a small complication?” He turned a woeful stare on his screen, as if spending a minute away from his game was torture. “A fatal wound to the Lilin delivers a fatal wound to you.”

  I nodded.

  “It’s expected. A part of you was used to create the Lilin, just as a part of Lilith was used to create both of you,” he continued, tilting his head to the side. Several blond curls flopped over. “All three of you are joined.”

  That had been said before, but no one had mentioned the fact that killing the Lilin would also kill me. That little tidbit had been left out. Not that I was entirely surprised.

  “We need to know how to separate the two.” Roth opened and closed the hand closest to me. “That’s why we’re here.”

  “And I know that.” Tony barely dragged his attention from the paused game. “This conversation is wasting my time and yours.”

  “Do you not care? I know your stupid game is important, but if we can’t stop the Lilin, you’re going to die. Everyone is going to die!” I shot to my feet, wanting to grab the little seer and shake him, but—but there was a part of me that understood he wasn’t being obtuse. We were the ones who were. Frustration pounded through me. “If we don’t succeed, the Lilin
will jump-start the end of the world. Even you warned us of this last time we were here.”

  “Last time you were here, I saw that there was a good chance for that to happen.” His pupils were at once a brilliant white. “Now I see that it will not happen. You will stop it.”

  I tensed. “But—”

  “You,” he repeated, eyeing me intently, “will stop it. And you already know how. The story is over. The end.”

  Roth sucked in a shrill breath, but I think I stopped breathing for a second. What none of us wanted to acknowledge in the hours after we’d gone toe-to-toe with the Lilin was now smacking us in the face again.

  Killing the Lilin meant killing myself.

  “You’re not helping us out here, bud.” Roth’s voice was calm, but anger and something else, something akin to desperation, were rolling off him, becoming a tangible entity in the room. “We need to know how to kill the Lilin without harming Layla.”

  “And as I’ve said, you already know the answer to that,” Tony replied from his beanbag throne. “You just don’t want to accept it.”

  I closed my eyes briefly. “So what you’re saying is...vice versa. If we kill me, we kill the Lilin?”

  “That’s bullshit,” Roth spat, and he was on his feet by the time I opened my eyes. “It’s an unacceptable answer.”

  A look of remorse flickered across the young seer’s face. “It’s the only answer.”

  Roth started toward Tony, and I snapped my hand out, grabbing his arm. He breathed in deeply, his chest rising sharply. A second later, Tony’s mother was in the room.

  She held a casserole dish above her head, as if she was ready to pitch it at one of us. “I think it’s time for you all to leave.”

  My grip tightened on Roth’s arm. She was right. It was time to go, because we knew what the answer was. We’d known what it was before we’d even come here, or at least I had. Roth was still mad eyeballing the seer, so I tugged on his arm.

  “Roth,” I whispered. “Let’s go.”

  He turned a sharp glare on me. “You’re just going to accept that?” He threw an arm up toward Tony. “That there’s no other way?”

  “No,” I said, and it wasn’t so much a lie as it was an attempt to end this before we ended up wearing green-bean casserole. “But we’re done here.” When he still hesitated, I pulled on his arm again. “We’ll figure this out on our own.”

  My words sounded weak to my own ears, but Roth finally relented. We started toward the front hallway, passing Tony’s stern mother.

  “Everything is for a reason,” the seer called as we neared the archway to the foyer, and when I looked back, he was standing, his expression solemn and wise beyond his years. “Not one thing in this world happens without a purpose. Everyone’s actions—those of the Prince and of your Wardens—have all been leading up to this. They’ve all sacrificed for you, for this. And it will not be in vain.”

  * * *

  Stacey’s face was the color of a piece of notebook paper and her dark eyes were wide. “No,” she said, and then louder, “No.”

  Twisting around in the front passenger seat, I glanced at Roth. At his hands. His knuckles were bleached white from gripping the steering wheel. He hadn’t said much since we’d returned to the Mustang. He stared straight ahead, a muscle ticking along his jaw as he drove us back to drop Stacey off at the high school.

  “Is there literally nothing that can be done?” Zayne asked, his hands resting on the back of my seat. “Or is it just that the seer doesn’t know what it will take?”

  “I don’t think there is a way,” I replied, flicking my gaze back to Zayne. He didn’t look just angry or confused, but more like a combination of the two. “It makes sense in a way, the fact that it’s connected to me and both of us are connected to Lilith. Our blood created the Lilin.”

  “Maybe it makes sense to you,” Stacey said, pulling one leg up and tucking it against her chest. “None of any of this crap really makes sense to me, but whatever. What are we going to do now? If we can’t kill the Lilin...”

  “If we don’t kill the Lilin, we lose Sam. We lose all those souls that the Lilin has taken,” I reminded her.

  Her face contorted as she looked away, staring out the window as the lawns and homes gave way to walls. “I haven’t forgotten that. I just...”

  Zayne leaned back in his seat, rubbing his hands down his face. “There’s got to be something. There’s so many damn books in my...my father’s study. I’ll check them when I get back. I’ll get Dez on it, too.” Lowering his hands, he sighed heavily. “We’re not giving up.”

  The fact that Zayne still cared enough about me to want to help eased a little of the burden I carried with me from hurting him so terribly. Then again, I shouldn’t be all that surprised. There was probably a part of him that hated me, understandably so, but under it all, he was a good guy—a great guy.

  “Did you hear me?” Zayne asked, drawing my gaze back to him. “We’re not giving up.”

  “I know, but...but we’re running out of time for Sam. And how much longer are the Alphas going to allow this violence to continue?” I was asking damn good questions. Ones that neither Zayne nor Roth could answer. “The Lilin took out an entire congregation of God’s Children. And yeah, I’m sure they weren’t on the big guy’s favorite list, but it’s only a matter of time before the Lilin does something that can no longer be overlooked. It almost exposed all of us when it woke those gargoyles. How much time do we really have to figure out a way around this?”

  “What are you saying?” Roth, finally speaking, barked out the question.

  Startled, I looked at him. His eyes were trained on the road. “I don’t know. Just that we...we don’t have any time.”

  Roth lapsed back into silence, and then we were pulling up in front of the high school. Seeing it, after what felt like forever, triggered a mixed response inside me. Part nostalgia and part keen disappointment—I wasn’t able to forget how much I’d looked forward to getting up every morning and going to school. Within those walls, I used to be able to pretend that I was normal. Looking back now, I saw how foolish that was, that childish urge to hide from what I was.

  It wasn’t something I could do anymore.

  Stacey grabbed her backpack off the floor of the Mustang and climbed out. I followed, so that I could give her a quick hug. We couldn’t linger, though. If any of the school officials saw me outside, that would raise a slew of unwanted questions we didn’t have time for.

  “You okay?” I asked when I pulled back from the hug.

  Nodding, she brushed her overly long bangs out of her eyes. “Yes. No.” She hitched up the strap of the bag farther up her shoulder. “Why are you even asking if I’m okay? You’re the one who’s virtually a Siamese twin with a psychotic demon. Don’t worry about me right now.”

  “It’s kind of hard not to.”

  “Or is it just easier to worry about me instead of yourself?”

  I opened my mouth, but what could I say to that? It was boldly on point. Glancing at the thick clouds, I sighed. “I don’t know what to think right now. I...” I trailed off, shaking my head.

  Stacey reached out, grasping the sleeve of my sweater and tugging gently. “You know you’re the sister I never really asked for, right?”

  I grinned. “Yeah.”

  “And I love you, no matter what. You know that also. And you know how much it...it killed me to lose Sam.” Tears filled her eyes, but her gaze was steady. “I can’t lose you, too.”

  Her statement unnerved me. “Why do you think that’s going to happen?”

  “Because I know you,” she replied, her voice hoarse. “Promise me you’re not going to do anything stupid.”

  “Me?” I forced a laugh that sounded like dry bones rattling. “Not do something stupid?”

  The joke did nothing to ease her mind. “You know what I mean. Promise me, Layla. I want to hear you promise me.”

  “I promise,” I whispered.

  As I parted w
ays with Stacey, I knew that my promise had done very little to reassure her. Truth was, the promise was one I never should’ve made. Because I had a lot of stupid left in me, and I knew what I had to do.

  twenty-six

  ROTH AND I helped Zayne and Dez skim through the ancient tomes that filled the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in Abbot’s study well into the evening. We were even joined by Danika and Nicolai once night fell. As we went from one dusty page to the next, I could hear the high-pitched giggles from Izzy and the shrill cries from Drake on and off all evening—clearly Jasmine was having a tough time wearing them out enough to get them to bed. By the time we