Page 163 of Of Stars and Lightning
“She’s going to destroy you,” Irene said through tight lips, her breathing labored.
Lorkin scoffed. “If she is as pathetic as you, Irene Yarrow, your daughter will be just as easy to kill in due time.”
There was a knock at the front door, frantic and familiar.
Sol screamed even louder at the people she knew would be beyond the door. At the fact she now knew those knocks, the sound of them coming, had distracted her mother.
Irene laughed, spitting in Lorkin’s face. “The secrets die with me. I let you win, fucker.”
Lorkin removed its claws from Irene, her heart, beating and broken, in its hands. Sol felt tears rush out, her face hot, and her lungs refusing to work. She cried even harder when her Mother’s body fell from the air, landing in the foyer. Broken, bleeding. Heartless.
Sol watched in horror as Lorkin held up her mother’s heart,licked it, then swallowed it whole before hovering over her body. The knocks became frantic. Then, turned to pounding as the people beyond tried to break the door down.
“Yarrow blood has always been the most delicious,” it sneered before sprinting on all fours out the back door, just as Sol and Leo burst through the entrance.
Fifty Two
CAS
THE WOOD SPLINTEREDbeneath Cas’s touch. He stepped over the crumpling debris, his entire being focused only on her.
The weeks they’d spent together during the Vows were almost binding in a way he hadn’t at all expected. Her sureness in herself, while holding on to a raw humanity Cas could only hope he still had a shred of, made him want to keep her safe, to ensure her light shone in the faces of those who refused to believe in it.
But another very different side of him wanted to keep that light hidden and to himself, safe from those who would abuse it. That side also found itself watching her as she smiled, wishing it would be toward him. Praying to have that dream of her again while he’d been under the Dark Spell.
Cas would take endless blasts of Void Magic if it meant he got to kiss Sol in the dreams they induced.
“Cas!” Nina slid to a stop next to him, grabbing his arm to steady herself.
Sawyer and Alix followed, wearing the same daunting expression he felt on his own face.
“Oh gods,” Sawyer whispered.
He saw it then. Beyond the steps of the castle, past the rows of lilies and roses, the Mind Slayer gave them a wicked grin, its thin, needle-like teeth reflecting the moonlight as its obsidian talons held Sol by her chest.
Cas couldn’t breathe as he noticed the blood dripping from theirpointed tips.
“My, what a rare, rare sight,” it hissed. It unrolled from its crouch, coming to its full height before them. It was just as repulsive as all other Mind Slayers he had seen, pallid and rotting and all that was wrong with the world. Its pupil-less eyes blinked and flashed. “I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing the great Yarrow Court all together. Lorkin will be pleased.”
The creature had Sol suspended in the air but facing away from them. Cas could make the outline of her birthmark, pulsing a subdued blue. He tried not to panic at the blindness, at not being able to see just how wounded she was, though he could barely make out the light rise and fall of her chest to indicate she still breathed. It didn’t placate him much.
White-hot rage pulsed through him, his Wards following suit.
“Let her go.” Nina’s entire body flared neon as the land shook beneath them. Cas struggled against his self-restraint, against every fiber of his being that screamed to kill the demon and grab Sol. But without knowing exactly how deep into the memory transfer they were, it was a gamble he couldn’t take.
Not with her.
“Get the people in the castle notified and safe,” Sawyer ordered. Alix gave her a quick nod before running back the way they came. She didn’t break her gaze from Sol either.
“I don’t think you want me to do that, Ninanette.” The Mind Slayer’s grin widened as it slowly turned Sol over. It hovered her closer, letting her body slump against its chest. It wrapped its limbs around her, laying its decaying, melting face on her shoulder.
Nina made a noise of either horror or dread.
Sol’s gaze was completely hazed, a blinding-white, a mirror to the Mind Slayer’s own sinister eyes. Three curved talons were staked clear through her chest. Cas had never seen a memory passage in action. He’d read of it and had nightmares about it. But this…
“We have seconds,” Sawyer whispered. “Seconds to take her when it disconnects from her mind.”
Nina shook, her magic sparkling and morphing with Cas's Shadows.
