Getting back to the point, Rose said, “It’s hopeless.”
“You underestimate the mating bond.” Niamh leaned toward her. “I know it’s much to ask, but you need to put your current feelings aside and do what’s right.”
“And what about—” Rose cut off, her whole body electrified with warning signals as Niamh froze, eyes wide, her mouth open as if in a silent scream. Her head shook from side to side in small, frantic increments, just like it had done that night at the club. “Ronan!”
He hurried to his sister’s side, grabbing on to her flailing hands, struggling to keep hold against her fae strength. “Nee, it’s okay, it’s okay,” he murmured.
Then just as abruptly, she stopped.
And a wail burst out of her, a deep, agonizing, mourning cry that sent a shiver down Rose’s spine. Tears filled Niamh’s eyes as she clasped her brother’s face in her hands. “No,” she sobbed.
Ronan’s face paled. “Nee?”
Before another word could be spoken, the world turned to chaos. The apartment windows blew open, screaming shards of glass flying everywhere. Pieces sliced at Rose’s skin before she had time to register what was happening.
“Ronan, run!” Niamh yelled, her grief-stricken expression morphing into fierce determination as she threw herself to her feet.
Rose was on hers too as the front door blasted open and people poured into the room, over the balconies, and through the broken windows.
Encircling them.
Witches and warlocks.
There were many of them. Too many.
Twelve. Blocking every way out of the loft apartment.
Under normal circumstances, Rose would’ve traveled out of there, but she couldn’t leave Niamh, and Niamh wouldn’t leave Ronan behind. There was nowhere for Ronan to run.
That’s when she caught sight of the weapon in each of their hands.
Silvery-gray daggers.
Pure iron.
“The O’Connors,” Rose said for Niamh and Ronan’s benefit.
A short, wiry witch wearing skinny jeans and a short leather jacket like the one Rose left in Zagreb stepped forward from her spot near the doorway. She twirled the dagger in her hand, her dark eyes focused on Rose. “This is no longer just duty, Rose O’Connor. This is justice. You killed Ethan, my brother.” Without another word, she threw the dagger with accuracy and speed.
Rose blurred across the room, out of its path and into the path of two warlocks. She must’ve been a streak of color to them, not quick enough to get out of her way before she sent her magic out to their carotid sinuses.
Two down.
A flick over her shoulder informed her Ronan was throwing punches with a very tall warlock while Niamh dodged an iron knife and thrust her palms into the chest of the witch who’d slashed with it. That witch soared through the broken French doors near the kitchen, out over the balcony, and beyond.
Three down.
That’s when the chanting began. Unintelligible words and sounds fell from the lips of all the magic-wielding humans as they positioned themselves at the room’s edges, arms out toward one another, hands almost but not quite touching.
“Nee,” Ronan wheezed.
His sister whirled around, blazing with fury and fear as Ronan’s fingers dug into his chest. His legs gave way beneath him.
“What’s happening?”
“They’re using him!” Niamh cried. “Sacrificing him for the power to take us down!”
“He isn’t enough!” Rose yelled at the witches and warlocks. “It won’t work! You’ll kill him for nothing!”
And that’s when she realized she might be forced to end these people.
To protect Ronan and Niamh.
More marks on her soul.
Drawing on every molecule of anger within her, Rose spread her own hands wide. “Niamh, get down.”
“Whatever she does,” Ethan’s sister yelled, “keep chanting! No matter the pain, you keep chanting!”
Focusing on the shards of glass that littered the apartment, Rose commanded them to rise. She saw the flicker of fear on her attackers’ faces, but they kept going while Niamh bizarrely forced her bleeding wrist against Ronan’s mouth.
Fionn’s voice filled her head. “They discovered when they started invading our world that their blood healed humans. In our world.”
She was trying to heal him while these barbaric assholes stole his life. Rose wasn’t sure it was working, because as she called on the glass, she could feel a slight weakening in herself.
With a scream of outrage, she slammed the air with her fists, her arms outspread like a cross, and the glass flew at all those magical bastards. The sharp pieces made contact, the chanting faltering as glass struck legs and arms, and even a throat.
Four down.
Still, they kept going.
“Rose!” Niamh screamed in panic.
The girl braced over her brother protectively, desperation etched in her face.
Her blood wasn’t healing him.
But she couldn’t leave him unprotected.
It was up to Rose.
Turning to face Ethan’s sister, the apparent leader of the wicked coven Rose had been born into, she knew she had to take her out. Focusing her magic toward the witch’s carotid, she was surprised when she felt the magic bounce back.
The woman smirked.
A barrier spell?
Rose looked around at all of them, bleeding and wounded, their chanting louder, determined to get the job done.
I’m going to have to kill them.
“Don’t do this,” Rose begged Ethan’s sister.
Still, they chanted.
Then he appeared. Out of nowhere.
Poof!
The last person Rose ever thought she’d want to see again, and yet her heart leapt gratefully at the sight of Fionn Mór popping into the apartment with a shampoo bottle—of all things—in his hand.
His head swung from side to side as he stood in the center of the chanting coven. Gaze swinging to Rose, those green eyes dipped down her body and back up again, as if checking for wounds. Satisfied she was all right, Fionn cut a look at Niamh and Ronan.
It took him seconds to figure out the situation, and Rose felt his magic tinge the air as the broadsword he’d used to fight Kiyo appeared in his free hand.
Stuffing the shampoo bottle into his overcoat pocket, Fionn gripped the sword with both hands and swung at the nearest warlock.
It broke the circle, the coven realizing Fionn could devastate them in seconds if they didn’t use their magic defensively.
Rose blurred between witches and warlocks, punching and kicking, trying to knock them out, which was hard to do when she had four on her.
She glanced across the room to see Fionn had killed three coven members and was engaged in a fight with a witch who apparently had conjured her own sword.
Seven down.
Fionn struck the possible eighth, his sword impacting hers with so much force, she cried out in pain, dropping the weapon as she stumbled to her knees.
His back turned, sword raised to finish her, Fionn seemed unaware of Ethan’s sister who ran across the apartment, jumping over the coffee table, iron dagger raised
above her head in both hands, ready to bring it down on him.
Fionn.
A fist hit Rose in the face, but she barely registered it before she traveled across the room, appearing at Fionn’s back, facing Ethan’s sister as her dagger came down.
It plunged into Rose’s chest before she could defend herself.
Agonizing pain blazed through her entire body, like fire licking at her insides.
“ROSE!” Fionn’s voice bellowed in rage behind her as she slumped to her knees.
Her vision grew unfocused, her mind lost to everything but the pain. What looked like a bloodied human head fell next to her. Images of Fionn, a streak of vengeance across the room, sword in hand, slicing through the coven, came and went between moments of utter black.
“Rose …” She heard his deep voice and the black retreated to the edges of her vision, revealing Fionn’s face. “It didn’t get you in the heart. I’m going to pull it out.”
She wanted to tell him to hurry, to make the pain stop, but she couldn’t. Agony stalled the words.
Something tugged in her chest, causing her torment to increase tenfold.
But then it was over.
The pain began to recede, and her vision came back into focus. Her breathing eased and feeling returned to her limbs.
A hand brushed the hair from her face, and Rose looked up to see Fionn kneeling beside her, his expression strained.
“You’ll be okay.”
She’d never heard his voice so soft.
“Why?” he growled, the soft crushed by his hard tone as he leaned his face so close to hers, their lips almost touched. “Why would risk your life for me?”
A broken sob cut through the air before Rose could come up with the answer to the most complicated question ever. The truth was, she hadn’t thought. She saw the dagger that was meant for Fionn, and the thought of his death propelled her into action.
Turning toward the wretched sound, Rose’s took in the apartment now littered with horror.
Fionn had killed the entire coven, except for the witch Niamh had expelled from the apartment.