Page 55 of Kiss of Smoke

“Get away from her!” Carabosse roared, rounding on the Unstained Souls. She shoved them away, reaching for Aurora, who held up her arms in a warding gesture.

In the scuffle, as the humans tried to back away from their leader, the bier was knocked aside. It seemed to tip slowly, and then it hit the floor, shattering crystal clear glass everywhere.

Aurora dove for the wreckage, shoving her mother away and scrabbling for a long shard of glass.

“Let me dream!” she shrieked. “I need him! I need him!”

Carabosse looked stricken, even as several male Unstained Souls glanced at each other and then piled on Aurora, plucking the shard from her bleeding hand and holding her arms outstretched.

The girl collapsed in on herself, sobbing loudly, her head hanging and her body slouched like deadweight between them.

Carabosse knelt in front of her, looking up at her daughter helplessly.

I knew what she was thinking. She’d taken the souls of Fae, and had used them to restore Aurora’s youth and vitality.

But she had restored Aurora to exactly what she was…a shell whose mind had been consumed by evanesce, the magic of the faerie fruit still in her veins.

Not even years of dreaming could restore what had been lost to magic.

And even now, Aurora would be craving the one thing she couldn’t have, the Fae who had introduced her to that magic and had rotted her mind, making him the one thing she literally lived for: Brightkin himself.

“I need him,” she sobbed, slurring the words.

Carabosse’s hands fluttered around her ineffectually, as though she were afraid to touch her own daughter. “We can fix this, my love. We can help you…you just have to trust me…”

I had to look away. It pained me to see her like this, so close and yet so far away. All that death for nothing but more pain.

Aurora let out an animalistic wail in response.

And then chaos broke loose.

One of the humans holding up Aurora lurched and shuddered, his body going stiff. We all looked up at the jagged shard of ice piercing through his left eye.

My heart skipped a beat. They were here.

The Unstained Souls rounded on the doorway as he collapsed to the floor, his body already freezing into a lump.

I caught sight of Jack, ice shimmering around him before one of the mortals waved a hand, using an ivory wand to create a magical shield.

Gwyn stormed in next, planting his boot in someone’s chest and snapping his dagger outwards, catching another man in the neck. Their blood gushed freely, spattering my Hunter’s face.

He laughed, then plunged his free hand into the man’s chest, ripping out an orb of light that jittered between his fingers.

The body collapsed, and Gwyn squeezed, the orb in his fist exploding into smoke.

As the rest of the Unstained Souls in the chamber began flooding towards the door, many of them clutching artifacts or chanting incantations, Robin strode in, calmly knifing another man in the gut and raising his gun to the head of a woman with a necklace in her hands. The gold was shimmering dangerously, and the air around them shimmered as though in a heatwave.

Ioin snarled at the intrusion, then bound my hands tightly and shoved me into the mess of glass shards.

I stumbled on the overturned bier, unable to catch myself, and landed bodily in the shards as Ioin sprinted towards the door. He was already pulling out a new iron chain.

The glass stabbed through my jeans and jacket, sharp points of pain, and I felt the wetness of blood inside my clothes.

I used my elbows to flip myself upright, getting to my knees and staying ducked under the chaos. Magic flew overhead in wild streaks as the Unstained Souls began using the artifacts with abandon, uncaring if the different types of magic and glamour would rebound on each other.

A faint shriek came to my ears, so different under the shouting and chaos, and I realized Carabosse and Aurora were gone.

Through a break in the crush of bodies, I saw another tunnel, where the old woman was practically dragging her shrieking daughter alongside her.

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