The humans outside cheered their queen on.
Mason’s vision blacked on impact with the doorway. Spots swam in his sight. Tangy blood coated his mouth. He tongued a loose tooth. His body pain was a muzzy hot blanket of stabs and bruises.
Khan was down on his knees, a palm planted on the floor. He’d said that Cari was breaking her House.
Breaking her House? Might as well be her heart. And Mason was helping her do this thing? Take apart her family? Her heritage? Her legacy to her children? The thought made his soul sick, worse than any of his other injuries.
No, Cari.
But she’d never been one to flinch. She was proud, but she would always do what she must. Must have gotten it from her father. And that was how her House had stayed strong. The people within it were Dolan’s power, not the Shadow itself.
It’s why he wanted Cari to be Fletcher’s mother.
“If the House fails, so does Maeve.” Khan’s voice was only half its usual timbre.
But what would be left of Cari when she was finished crushing this part of herself?
Mason struggled up to face the faery queen again.
How many stones remained? A few or a million? Didn’t matter. He would distract the witch and then spend the length of both this life and his next, his skill and magic, making Cari whole again.
Dragging the sword, he lurched forward, the last man standing.
“I want you, too, lover,” Maeve said. “You will be the price for Cari’s treachery.”
And then the fae was gone.
It took a couple blinks for his eyes to pierce the dark murk of smoky magic enough to confirm that fact, as other things moved in the room, too.
Cari. The cellar. Ward Stones.
He dove past Khan, leaving Death on his knees. If Shadowman could stand, he’d be doing so on his own. Down the hallway—thank pitch he knew the lay of the House—to the double doors, shut tight like a tomb. Shadow crackled through the wood where he clutched it.
As he hauled one door open, a woman’s scream sliced through Shadow and up the stairs toward him.
He was too late already.
Cari scraped at the earth to release the fifth stone. Felt its smoothness, the heat of its magic soothing to her cold and bloody fingers. She wanted to hold it close to her to get warm. She felt like she’d never be warm again.
“You can’t have her,” Scarlet said to Maeve, her body interposed between the fae and Cari. Her hands were raised, as if she could possibly hold the queen back.
Cari lifted the stone.
“Caspar gave her to me.” Maeve thrust her stepmother roughly to the side.
Stacia cried, “Mother!”
The sound of pain put even more emotion behind Cari’s downward strike. The force of the stone’s destruction sent her flying back from Maeve, while the fae only wavered.
Scarlet was dead, her body a skinny long heap, too misshapen to ever draw breath again. Cari choked on sobs, her eyes burning with tears. Her head was so clogged with sadness she could only lever herself up to all fours. What had she done? Her father had entrusted her with Dolan House; it had taken her little more than two weeks to bring it down. And the only mother she’d ever known had just died for that decision.
Cari lifted her face as the door burst open across the room. Mason entered, his face so bloodied, she didn’t know how he could stand. Zel held the last stone on the other side of the room, its light shining on her sister’s face from below, her shock and loss amplified by the upward cast of the shadows. They were all stray now.
Maeve reset herself with beauty and wonder, as if she were illuminated from within, when there was only darkness inside.
The sixth and last stone was across the room. There was no way Cari could reach it in time. All this death and destruction, and still she’d failed.
And Maeve knew it. “Now, dove . . .”
Mason reached over and took the stone from Zel. His palm was easily big enough to clutch it. He used the sword as a cane to hold himself up with his other hand.
Did he think to throw the last Dolan ward stone across the room? It was absurd. Success was too far away, with too great an obstacle in between.
Maeve laughed, a trilling, layered sound of mirth.
“Just don’t hurt them,” Cari begged. She’d do whatever Maeve wanted, sit on that throne or whatever. “Please let them go. I’ll belong to you.” She couldn’t face her sisters anyway, nor give Mason and his son the safe House she’d promised.
“No, Cari.” Mason lifted the stone, concentration in the tilt of his head and strain of his body. The stone’s glow flickered, making her feel strange inside, something weak tugging. “You belong to me.” The gray stone riddled with jagged black lines, his Maker’s power, and he crushed the last Dolan ward stone in his hand.
Dust and crumbled stone fell from Mason’s hand, just as Cari dropped soundlessly forward from her knees, eyes wide open, insensible. He felt as if he’d crushed her.
And Shadow convulsed into a sudden hurricane of magic that moaned and howled, cyclonic in the deep earth. The scent of dreams and sex and seduction thickened in the storm, like the smell of rain in the desert. Maeve opened her mouth to speak or shriek, but her face and person warped in the gale and she was absorbed in the stewing torment. She had nothing to hold her here, no House, no kin to claim her.
A punch of noise, a million voices crying out, and the cellar became an antiquated basement. The silence was ominous.
But Mad Mab was gone.
And Dolan House with her. Cari was collapsed in tatters, her hands bloody before her.
A wail of anguish rattled up Mason’s throat. The sword dropped. His weight pitched forward to lunge toward Cari. His transport from here to there was a blur, but then he was gathering her up into his arms.
“Cari!”
Her skin was cold. He pushed her hair out of her face, strands combed by her lashes. He put two fingers to her neck to search for a pulse. He’d have to get this awful gown off her so she could breathe.
The sisters had moved, too, and were sobbing quietly.
There. A flutter against his fingertips.
He pressed harder. Sought deeper. “Cari?”
Her heartbeat answered.
He put his cheek to her mouth and felt the warmth of breath. Still alive.
Relief burned through him, like lava in his veins. The pain of it was brutal, angry, and utterly welcome. Cari was still alive. “Sweetheart?”
No answer.
Alive, but her mind was very far away. Which was okay. He could work with that. He’d find a way to coax her back to him. He’d been training for it all his life.
Pulling her up to him, he kissed her forehead, leaving a smear of his blood on her pale skin. Then he locked his arms around her, because he couldn’t stand.
Help would come. The wards were down. An incredulous laugh shook him. Trust Cari to do what she had to do to get a job done. It was a good trait and a dangerous one. He was duly warned.
He looked over to Stacia and Zel. The elder had taken off her shirt to cover her mother’s head. Next to the fallen body, the sisters held each other, faces into each other’s necks.
One minute ran into another.
“Help is on the way,” he said. The Order just might not know where they were. “Won’t be long.”
And they’d get to safety. He’d make Cari warm and comfortable. Make her sleep for a while. Get some food in her stomach. See if she’d come around on her own.
The sisters broke apart and Stacia turned to him. “Is she going to be alright?”