I tried to call it back, I tried to pull it back in, but it was so much, it was too mu
ch—
“Sam,” Ryan whispered harshly in my ear. “Sam. It’s done.”
I gasped and closed my hand into a fist on the floor, the cracked stone scraping against my knuckles.
I felt the lightning leave my heart as quickly as it’d come, blood rushing in my ears, vision swimming.
It was quiet in the aftermath.
I raised my head slowly.
Myrin, in his Wan suit, smiled at me.
“Soon,” he said. “I’ll see you real soon.”
And then he snapped his head viciously to the right. There was the wet crack of bone.
Wan the Dark Hunter slumped against the wall, legs skittering on the floor.
It only lasted a few seconds. It felt like hours.
And then it stopped.
Wan’s eyes were open and glassy.
His chest did not rise.
“Motherfucker,” Gary yelled. “That godsdamned dirty fighting ass bitch. He called me a horse! He’s dead! He’s so fucking dead, he don’t even know how dead he is!”
“So dead,” Tiggy agreed. “Punch him in his brain.”
Randall groaned as he pulled himself up off the floor.
Morgan sat on his knees looking down at his hands.
I stood, regretting when Ryan’s arm fell away from me.
“You okay?” I asked as I turned toward him. He didn’t seem any worse for wear, no visible signs of injury, though he groaned when he reached down to pick his sword up from the floor.
“Fine,” he muttered. “Though I could have done without the whole up-close-and-personal-with-the-lightning thing.”
“Would you say it was… shockingly close?”
“Oh my gods. Did you just—”
“We don’t have time for your jokes,” I said dismissively. “We have plans to make. Gary! Tiggy! Stop lazing about. Get up and get moving!”
“Fuck you, Sam,” Gary said. “I have been traumatized, okay? You don’t even know what I’ve been through. I am emotional, and I would like a cup of hot chocolate and to have someone rub my hooves and tell me I’m pretty.”
“We don’t have time for that now,” I said, heading toward the door, knowing the others would follow. “We’ve got work to do.”
“You’re pretty,” Tiggy told Gary.
“Thank you, kitten. It’s high time someone recognizes that.”
“Sam,” Randall said, his voice a whipcrack of warning.