Page 105 of The Witch and His Crow

Arwyn was still there, at a distance, offering up the athame as if he knew this outcome was fated. His face was set into a mask of thunderous anger, matching the maelstrom I felt inside. He mouthed two words to me, proving none of this was some made-up hell in my mind.

‘I’m sorry.’

I stretched out my hand towards him, blindly reaching for the weapon Arwyn held. Once I recognised the familiar press of a handle against my power, I clutched onto it and pulled it towards me.

‘Not going to happen.’ Jaz noticed my use of my Gift and called on her own. The pain she conjured in my bones was nothing compared to what I felt already. But it did break my connection to my Gift, just as the athame was inches from my hand.

Helplessly, I couldn’t do anything but watch it fall.

Just like Caym had, the arrow pierced all the way through his small body.

‘She’s mine,’ hissed a voice from behind me. Romy leapt forwards, throwing herself to the ground, catching the athame in an outstretched hand. Jaz was too busy punishing me with her Gift that she didn’t notice as Romy used the momentum, drew back the athame and threw it forwards.

The blade spun before sinking into Jaz’s chest. Immediately, the agony was severed. And then Romy was there, using the distraction to tear into Jaz with nail and tooth.

Arwyn was running towards me as I sank to the ground, hands shaking as I looked over Caym’s body. My mind raced with possibilities. If I could take the arrow out, staunch the bleeding enough to forestall his death. Eleanor’s grimoire warmed in my inner pocket, promising answers.

‘It’s too late.’Caym’s voice was a light chirp in my mind. ‘What’s done is done.’

I shook my head, tears pooling in my eyes, made from fury and grief. Two emotions I knew well. ‘I won’t let you die. You won’t leave me, Caym. I need you’

‘You have proven that to be a highly incorrect statement, Hector.’Caym twitched on the ground, so much blood pooled beneath him it was as if the earth leached the colour from his feathers.

‘I told you to stay away, Caym. Why didn’t you listen!’ I sunk my fingers into the blood-soaked earth, as though I could scoop it all back up and return it to where it belonged. I longed to lift him up and clutch him to my chest. Caym couldn’t die. If he did, a part of me would follow.

‘Duty.’

I almost couldn’t hear his reply. Caym’s voice was so tired, it was no different to the slow rush of water in a distant river. Since the night my mother brought Caym into my life, we’d never been apart. He’d been my voice of reason, my deepest companion. I’d only just got him back, and Jaz had taken him away from me.

The noise of Jaz and Romy fighting had stilled to silence. Arwyn should’ve reached me by now, but he hadn’t. I looked up from Caym’s dying body, ready to beg for someone to help, but what I saw silenced me.

A wall of greenery—thorns, leaves, and roots. It surrounded me, beside the narrow path at my back.

This was the maze.

I no longer stood in its centre, but within its walls. Alone. My focus had been on Caym and I hadn’t noticed the shift in atmosphere until it was too late.

‘Please, don’t leave me. I can’t lose you too, Caym.’

I waited for his reply, the silence becoming more torturous than anything I’d experienced. For a moment, I thought death had finally claimed him. But if I focused hard, I could still feel a slither of somethingotherin my soul.

‘It has been’ I choked on a sob as Caym’s voice filtered down our bond ‘a pleasure to…serve you, Hector Briar.’

‘No.’ Guided by panic, I wrapped my fingers around the slick shaft of the arrow and began to tug it free. ‘No.No. Don’t you dare say that. Caym, shut up.Shutup!’

It wasn’t a goodbye in simple terms, but it sounded exactly like one.

‘Do not fear the shadows,’ Caym managed, his last bout of strength used for those words. ‘Rule them.Win…become…Grand High.’

‘Take me home,’ I demanded. ‘Do it, Caym, right now. I command you to take me away from here. I give up, please. I’m sorry, I swear I will never command you again. Just please…take me home…take me away…don’t go.’

No matter how I pleaded with him, agreeing to the very thing he wanted from me only minutes before, Caym didn’t respond. He couldn’t, because he no longer belonged to me anymore. He belonged to death itself.

I felt the moment his soul left me as severely as someone taking a knife and physically cutting Caym’s presence out. I clutched at my chest, agony tearing me in half. The noise I released was a keening scream, splitting the silence apart. Nolonger able to cause him discomfort, I ripped the arrow free of his chest and pulled the limp body of my crow onto my lap. With my face turned to the sky, I bellowed and shouted. I rocked back and forth on my knees, begging Hekate for help.

‘Save him!’ I bellowed, throat aching. ‘Hekate, do something worthy of my belief and save him!’

Of course, the goddess didn’t listen. She hadn’t listened since long before I was born.

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