Beautiful Redemption (Caster Chronicles 4)

I wanted to throw myself at her, but every instinct I had left told me to stay back. “You’re nothing, Sarafine. You’re a ghost.”

She smiled when I said the word “ghost,” biting the tip of one of her long black nails. “Something we have in common now.”

“We don’t have anything in common.” I could feel my hands clenching into fists. “You make me sick. Why don’t you get out of my sight?”

I didn’t know what I was saying. I wasn’t in any position to be ordering her around. I didn’t have a weapon. No possible means of attack. No way past her.

My mind raced, but I couldn’t find an advantage—and you couldn’t let Sarafine get the upper hand.

Kill or be killed, that was her style. Even when it seemed like we should have moved past something as Mortal as death.

Her mouth curled into a snarl. “Your sight?”

She laughed, a cold sound that rippled down my spine. “Maybe your girlfriend should have thought about that before she killed me. She’s the reason I’m here. If it weren’t for that ungrateful little witch, I would still be in the Mortal world. Instead of stuck in the dark, battling the ghosts of lost and pathetic Mortal boys.”

She was close enough now that I could see her face. She didn’t look too good, even for Sarafine. Her dress was ragged and black, the bodice charred into tattered pieces. Her face was smudged with soot, and her hair smelled like smoke.

Sarafine turned toward me, her eyes glowing and white—milky with an opaque light I had never seen before.

“Sarafine?”

I took a step back—just as she struck me with a bolt of electricity, the smell of burnt flesh traveling faster than her body possibly could.

I heard a psychotic scream. Saw her face, contorted into an inhuman death mask. Sharp teeth seemed to match the dagger she held in her hand—only inches from my throat.

I winced, pulling back from the blade, but I knew it was too late. I wasn’t going to make it.

Lena!

Sarafine stopped short, as if smashed backward by an invisible current. Her arms stretched toward me, her blade shaking with anger.

Something was wrong with her.

I heard the sound of chains as she fell, stumbling back toward her throne. She dropped the blade, and her long skirt kicked open, and I saw the manacles around her ankles. The chains holding her to the ground and pinning her to the throne.

She wasn’t the Queen of the Underworld. She was an angry dog trapped in a kennel. Sarafine screamed, beating her fists against the bones. I moved to the side, but she didn’t even look at me.

Now I understood.

I picked up a bone and tossed it at her. She didn’t react until it hit the throne, falling harmlessly into the pile of debris at her feet.

She spit at me, shaking with rage. “Fool!”

But I knew the truth.

Her white eyes saw nothing.

Her pupils were fixed.

She was blind.

Maybe it was from the fire that had killed her in the Mortal world. It all came flooding back to me—the terrible end of her terrible life. She was as damaged here as she was when she burned to death. But that wasn’t all. Something else had happened. Even the fire couldn’t explain the chains.

“What happened to your eyes?” I watched her recoil when I said it. Sarafine wasn’t one to show weakness. She was better at finding and exploiting it.

“My new look. Old blind woman, like the Fates or the Furies. What do you think?” Her lips curved over her teeth, into a growl.

It was impossible to feel sorry for Sarafine, so I didn’t. Still, she seemed bitter and broken.