Page 68 of Reflections of Silence

Dolion lurched, steel glancing from his stone chest in a clatter and clang. The knife bounced off him and disappeared into the hedge.

Amy turned her back to us, presenting an opportunity I knew Sebastian wouldn’t waste. He blurred forward, leaping in aninhuman lurch as he had the night on the jetty. Red mixed with black, swirling around each other.

I pressed forward, but my own movements were sluggish, caught in a web Amy had spun around me while I processed events too far from my frame of reference to understand as Sebastian and Dolion did.

Around me, arms began to raise. Everything moved so slowly, I knew we would never reach the two entwined in their deadly battle before one met their end. While their movements were at such an unfathomable speed, ours were lethargic. I closed my eyes, never having imagined the limitlessness of Amy’s power.

Wind whipped around us in a maelstrom of grit and silver. Then the air cleared, and Amy stood before me. Sebastian lay unmoving at her feet. Immobilized as I had been before by her hand, I couldn’t even reach out for him.

Grief clogged my throat, making my next breath as impossible as the ones that never left his body.Can an already dead man bleed?I didn’t know the answer to that question, or any other.

Her magic tightened around me, crippling at such proximity. If I had thought her powerful when she had me wrap my own neck in a noose from a distance, it had nothing on the raw strength she had in person.

How could I not see what you were when I lived beside you for months on end?

I screamed the words inside my head until she shut down that, too, deadening my fear to a muffled echo. Red lips parted in a wide smile and the tongue that licked them was anything but human.

“I shall enjoy devouring you, too,” she purred. Her lithe fingers hooked into claws, reaching for me.

My stomach roiled, but death might be preferable to a life without the man I loved. “I can’t fight you,” I whispered, numbed lips slurring the words.

Her smile widened, long fangs extending past her lips.

And I loved you, too.

A crunch on gravel drive gave her pause, the sound originating from behind her. So out of place in the midst of her conquest, the small patter of slippered feet halted Amy’s movement. Her head turned, refocusing on the newcomer.

I blinked, part of her spell easing away in her distraction. She revolved on her heel to display Minette, a vague smile on her sweet face, offering up a tray of champagne. Her eyes hooded, docile in her dreamlike state. She wobbled toward Amy over the loose stones, all expression removed from her face.

I stared at her wildly; how could she have missed what was happening here? Had Charleton been remiss in his instructions? Amy had gotten into everyone’s head, even the wolves. What could I expect of the staff who had no defense from such an unknown, powerful force?

I’m so sorry.

I will take it all, Gisella. He was never worth it. And you will see.

Our thoughts collided, the words mingling into an insensible knot inside my mind. Ignoring Minette, Amy raised her arms over her head, her nails elongating into vicious talons that glowed and smoked as she gloated at me. Heat emanated from Minette’s direction. The glasses bubbled and overflowed, and I knew Amy had her hand in what happened to my poor maid.

She stood vapid and relaxed, as though the liquid she carried wasn’t boiling on her tray. Orange flame flashed in the crystal glasses, and they shattered as one in a cacophony that drowned out Amy’s horrible laughter. Glass struck Minette’s face, slicinginto her flawless skin in a thousand cuts, but still, she didn’t react.

The fire bloomed into a hideous thing of many heads, slicing through the crowd and felling wolves in its haste to engulf the house. The man beside shifted, did, or tried to. Dolion’s stunted roar mingled with the scream of glass as it flung outward in every direction.

Minette’s eyes cleared, and she sent a single, hard look in Dolion’s direction.

She slipped her hand from beneath her tray, a thin, honed blade in her palm, and swept it in a wide arc. Red flung in a hundred directions, mingling with the shattered glass as her as the knife buried itself in Amy’s neck.

Scarlett, not of the sorcerer’s dress, coated her skin. Her arms windmilled, smoking talons flashing as she fell, and a fresh spray of life coated my face. One slowed instance, and an eternal life was snuffed from their earth with no one left to mourn her passing.

I stared down at my husband, so still by my feet. Smoke poured around us, obscuring everything.

My eyes watered. I covered my eyes and mouth with limbs and a mind that were my own again. Relief came in the form of my own freedom until the horror around us sank into my awareness.

Screams ricocheted from the drive as people rushed from the house that billowed smoke and flame as though the very demons of hell itself walked the earth. I caught glimpses of faces blackened with soot and eyes white with fear as the townsfolk tore away from the house, Sebastian’s name on too many lips.

We sought to save ourselves, but instead I have condemned you.

I closed my eyes, stumbling forward. “I’m sorry, Sebastian.” It wouldn’t matter if he were dead. Charleton wouldn't speak out about his master; his loyalty ran true. Dolion would run, without his friend as a solid base to rely upon. Grief bloomed in my heart.

But I loved you.

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