Heart of Vengeance (Alice Worth #6) - Lisa Edmonds Page 0,146

Fallen. My sisters and I keep the peace and see justice is done in this realm. Without us, many would suffer and die in the chaos. We cannot risk our own annihilation, not even for our brother.”

“Fine.” I went to my knees at Ronan’s side. “If you won’t help, I will.”

“How?” Lucy asked, crouching beside me. “You take a course in angel first aid?”

“I’ll figure something out.” I cupped Ronan’s face with my hand. His hot skin hurt my palm. His chest barely moved.

I leaned close so I could murmur in his ear. “We are all getting back on that train, you ass. Plus I’ve got a message for you, knight with no court or kingdom.”

No response.

I pulled the knife out of Ronan’s side and dropped it on the ground. The jagged obsidian blade was full of very black magic. Putrescent flesh surrounded the bloody wound. I gagged.

“You may kill yourself if you attempt to save him,” Eir warned.

I snorted and stuck my fingers into the wound in Ronan’s side. “If I had a quarter for every time someone told me that.” I took a deep breath and closed my eyes so I could focus.

With my blood magic and dark magic, I tried to pull the poison and black magic out of Ronan’s body as I’d drawn Kyrios’s poison from Daisy, but its tentacles went deep into his flesh and didn’t want to come out.

“Damn it.” I cut my fingertips on the edge of Ronan’s broken sword, sucking in a breath at the pain. I stuck my fingers back into the wound in his side, lowered my shields, and pulled the vile mix of magic and poison into myself instead.

My blood and earth magic burned away most of the poison and black magic as it left Ronan’s body. I shuddered. My skin burned hot all over as the remainder entered my bloodstream.

Someone wrapped their slim but strong arms around me and held me tightly so I didn’t fall over. Lucy. Daisy chuffed in my ear, maybe to reassure me that she was beside me as well.

I drew poison and black magic from Ronan’s body until I couldn’t take anymore, and then crawled away from the others to vomit. What came out was black and horrible and tasted like blood and the inside of a dumpster, and cut the inside of my belly, throat, and mouth like razors as I expelled it onto the ground.

Finally, when it was over, I collapsed on my side, my chest heaving with harsh breaths almost like sobs. I was sick and exhausted, but I was alive, and so were Ronan, Lucy, Esme, and Daisy.

The ground rumbled. With my head resting on the hot, ash-covered rock, I heard a distant roar that sounded very much like Typhon bellowing from within the earth. Our dragon ally had found someplace very deep to stash the Son of the Darkness. “Same to you, pal,” I rasped.

Someone knelt beside me. I opened my eyes, expecting it to be Lucy. Instead I found myself looking up into Ronan’s glacier-blue gaze. He looked haggard, but his hand was only just warm and not scalding when he cupped my cheek.

“I owe you a great boon,” he said roughly.

“No debts between friends.” My voice sounded no better.

He produced a cloth from a pocket of his pants and wiped my face and mouth. A black scar marked where Mariela’s knife had punctured his side. Something told me he’d bear that scar for a very long time.

When his fingers grazed my lips, magic tingled. Whether it was mine or his, I couldn’t tell. “I have a question for you,” I murmured as he finished cleaning my face.

“Yes?”

“Who put the bounty on your head?”

The corners of his mouth turned up. “Freya. It’s a long story.”

I blinked. Freya, as in the Freya? “I bet.”

He offered me his hand. I took it and he lifted me to my feet without showing any strain. And he flexed when he did it. I rolled my eyes.

The ground rumbled one more time, then went still.

We’d won.

Hadn’t we?

Torryn’s prophecy said I wouldn’t succeed in stopping the Furies, bringing Mariela back, or getting the scroll so Malcolm and I could make it home. I hadn’t had to stop the Furies, as it turned out, and Mariela was most certainly not returning to our world unless someone scooped her remains into a bucket. That left the scroll.

I made my way through the shriveled corpses of the dead creatures to the puddle of bloody goop that