Page 160 of Claimed

He staggers. And I seize the back of his neck and force him down onto the blade, then wrench, hard, forcing his head clean off his shoulders.

Selphine screams.

Morrighan’s power lashes towards Eira, and I throw myself between them. The strike opens my shoulder wider but Eira remains untouched. And her fury explodes through the bond.

She rips Widow’s Fang free and slashes her palm across the blade. Blood runs down the metal.

Our bond flares. ‘Valentin,’ she says.

I know.

I bite into my own wrist and let blood spill over her hand, over the hilt, over the blade buried again in Marek’s chest.

Our blood meets and the weapon ignites silver-red.

‘No,’ Selphine sobs.

It is the first sound she makes that belongs entirely to a woman, not a witch.

Eira’s eyes do not soften and I have never been prouder of my warrior hunter. ‘You should have let me choose.’

Together, we drive the blade through Marek’s heart. His body arches once, then stills as he dies with Morrighan’s name on his lips, not Selphine’s. Which is desperately sad in its own way.

The underworld convulses.

The River Veyr rises in a black wall. The Blood Chrysalis flares above us, cracks spreading across its surface, then sealing hard under a pulse of silver from our bond. The route Selphine wanted, where the real Blood Chrysalis is hidden – an Irish hollow in Cnocán Mór, east of the Derryveagh Mountains in Ireland – screams as it closes, collapsing like a tunnel under burning stone.

Morrighan shrieks.

The sound tears through Netheris and sends towers shattering in the distance.

Selphine catches Marek’s falling body, but he is already ash in her arms. Her face fractures through every age at once: young lover, old witch, grieving monster, furious survivor.

Then her eyes lift to Eira. ‘You have made an enemy for eternity.’

Eira’s voice is steady. ‘Get in line.’

Selphine vanishes in a spiral of swamp-gold light before I can reach her.

I lunge anyway but Eira catches my hand. The touch stops me more completely than any command.

‘Don’t bother, vampire. She’s gone.’

I nod, but grim certainty settles in my chest. ‘She will return.’

‘Yes.’ Eira steps closer, her body flickering slightly, Netheris pulling at the edges of her. ‘So we should probably make sure I do too.’

Fear strikes clean through victory. I grip her face. ‘You will.’

‘Bossy.’

‘Alive.’

Her smile trembles.

Morrighan rises behind us, no longer smiling. The Crimson Mother looks at the sealed route, the dying silver in the cracks, Marek’s ash scattered across the plain. ‘You think this victory matters?’

I turn, keeping Eira at my side. ‘It matters enough that you are angry.’