Fortune Favors the Cruel - Kel Carpenter Page 0,79

it wasn’t enough.

Because there was something else going on here … something she hadn’t seen for what it was. Not until this moment. Not until it was too late.

Quinn didn’t even realize when her eyelids had slid closed. She no longer had the energy to keep them open. Her awareness had whittled down to one single point. The Servalis stone that held the entirety of her being … and then some.

She had to keep going. She had to survive. She had to know she could survive and come out stronger. Squeezing the object between her two palms, Quinn silently demanded the truth.

And the stone answered.

A tendril of something dark reached from the stone and into her chest, wrapping a vice around her life force. Her essence continued to rapidly drain away and Quinn felt it like a sword through her stomach when it started to pull more than just magic.

It was wrong. It was twisted—an aberration.

Her eyes shot open and she dropped the stone to the base of the spring whirlpool, but it was too late. Her arms wouldn’t lift. Her legs gave way. Quinn’s mouth opened but no sound came out as she was swallowed up by the black water and sank below the surface.

As her consciousness dispersed into oblivion, in her final thoughts, Quinn wondered … was dying really this easy?

Basilisk’s Sacrifice

“Ordinary beings rarely make history. It is the abnormal, the aberrations, that change the world.”

— Lazarus Fierté, dark Maji, heir to Norcasta, Master of men

Lazarus moved to the edge of the water, the toes of his boots barely skimming the edge of the still surface as he stared across the cavern. Leviathan’s eye illuminated Quinn, transforming her pale skin to something otherworldly as she held the Servalis stone to her chest. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her lips pinched in agony.

Darkness leaked from her skin, staining the waters, churning them. Even as far from Quinn as he was, he could feel the sheer power that exuded from it. Concern began to fester inside his chest, eating away at his calm facade. Sparks of awareness prickled along his nerves, sending his senses into overdrive. He could hear every sharp inhalation of her breath, every shift she made to try and ignore the pain rapidly overwhelming her. He could smell the faint hint of salt on the cave walls mixed with the floral darkness of the moon flowers that stretched over the vines. There was something tainted about the scents, like a hint of rank blood was seeping from the petals.

Lazarus was fixated, his entire being focused on the woman across the space of water and stone. Quinn opened her mouth in a silent scream, her back bowing. Lazarus fought to not go after her. To not walk through the waters and pluck her from this nightmare—because he could not. Quinn would survive this. Despite the sharp gasps emerging from between her lips and the labored, sluggish movements of her body as she struggled to keep herself up, Lazarus would not accept any other answer. She would survive this and therefore, she would later survive her ascension. He couldn’t doubt her. Not here and now when it would be too late.

And then the Servalis stone slipped from her fingers, splashing down into the oblivion of dark waters surrounding her. Lazarus frowned, his sharp eyes assessing Quinn’s pale cheeks as she slapped her hands against the stone. She didn’t appear to be aware of what she was doing. Her entire focus preoccupied. Is she … trying to get out of the water?

Lazarus took a step forward, the clear water of the lower pool nipping at his ankles. Dread bloomed inside of him, reaching long tentacle like fingers up to squeeze around his heart and throat as doubt took form despite his best wishes.

Quinn looked up, her eyes meeting his. They were so hazy, so clouded, and he was no longer confident that she could even see him beyond that curtain of pain. Her lips, now nearly blue, parted and then she collapsed.

Lazarus cursed under his breath as she sank down beneath the surface of the opaque waters. He waited, hoping that she’d reappear within the next few moments. But when she didn’t, he cursed again, turning and throwing off his cloak immediately.

Despite of Thorne’s warning, he was going to have to take his chances and enter the pool. Quinn may not die from the pain, but she could certainly drown in the meantime, and Lazarus could not allow that. She