Persie Merlin and the Witch Hunters - Bella Forrest Page 0,119
world, and I wasn’t ready for him to go. I’d only just started getting to know him.
He whimpered again, his breaths strained. I didn’t need to know his language to understand. He was saying goodbye. If the witch hunters had known that, they would have come straight for me. Instead, they held back, still afraid to approach in case my sweet-natured monster tried to rip them to pieces. To the untrained eye, he was still a threat. But I knew better. He didn’t have long now.
“I’m sorry, Gren.” I buried my face deeper into his fur and clung to him, so he would know he was loved. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more to help you. I’m sorry I ever told anyone about you. I should have let you go free when I had the chance. I should’ve… saved you. You were never meant to be in a cage. Your heart’s too big for that. I’m so, so sorry. Please… forgive me.”
Gren nudged me gently, one final time. And then he was gone. He slumped forward, his chin rolling off my shoulder, his head collapsing onto his coiled body. I waited to hear him whimper or snuffle or bellow again, but he lay silent and painfully still.
“Well, what are ye hangin’ about for? It’s dead! It ain’t gonna protect her no more!” The ringleader jabbed a finger at my Gren, realizing the threat had passed. “Clamber over that thing and get her so we can get out of here!”
Up until now, I’d tried to play nice. I’d stopped Gren from devouring them, not wanting death on my hands, and how had they repaid us? They’d zapped my best friend’s brain, they’d tried to strangle the life out of Nathan, and they’d killed my gentle giant of a monster—not to mention, they wanted to kidnap us. A blinding spike of pain stabbed through my entire being. I felt it cut into me like it was an actual blade, the despair spreading out across my chest like fluid. I felt the grief of all my recent losses: my home, the pixies, Genie, and now Gren. Not to mention the stinging hurt of Reid’s betrayal. He hadn’t joined the fight, but he hadn’t stood beside me, either. He was still on the sidelines, watching me struggle.
“I save you, and this is all you can do? You come crying to me, and you kill a beast that I love? You beg for mercy, and you repay me with a knife in the back and a hex in his throat?” My voice boomed out of me with a volume and power that, on any other day, would have scared me senseless. This didn’t sound like me. This sounded like Leviathan. And maybe this occasion called for a bit of a hell queen’s attitude.
The witch hunters froze, terror evident on their nasty, twisted faces. Perhaps, given a few minutes to let the agony ebb, I could’ve found a way to rein in my anger. However, at that moment, my Gren began to disintegrate. Ashy flakes of gray drifted away from his body and turned to black mist in the air, each flake disappearing and taking him to wherever Purge beasts went after they died. The sight tipped me over the edge.
“You’ve no doubt heard the name Merlin.” I roared, mimicking the monsters that I’d lost. “Well, you’re about to find out why we’re so famous.”
I let the all-consuming pain loose, feeling the white-hot energy of it pulsing through every cell and fiber of my being. Tears trickled down my cheeks as I threw back my head and clenched my hands into fists, calling on all of that raw emotion to bring about the very thing that, just hours before, I’d still feared. In losing Gren as he gave his life to protect me, I became aware, more than ever before, that my curse wasn’t a curse. It was a gift. It was everyone else, everyone who thought of my creations as “things” and “fuel,” who made it a heavy weight to bear.
Violent spasms wracked my body, each intense pulse pushing something dark and intense up from my chest and into my throat. Black mist seeped out of my pores, creating a circle of black fire that began to spin faster and faster and faster until I saw only shadow. I shook uncontrollably, the sensations too forceful, too extreme, too strong for my flimsy human shell to take. Then, without warning, a pillar of black mist shot