His eyes are wide open. I lift his head, but dead weight drags it back down. "Rylan, please," I croak, tears spilling from the corners of my eyes. Blood seeps through my trousers and warms my knees. He hasn't been dead for long.

I might still have a chance.

A sharp blue light ignites from my fingertips and I press against his throat, quickly allowing the magic to stitch together the gash that likely ended his life after what appears to be a beating for the ages. I glance back at the messy kitchen, realizing that none of this came at the hands of Rylan's despair. Someone did this to him—tossed him around like a rag doll, then slit his throat to deem the job done.

His skin didn't even have time to bruise.

The wound disappears quickly and I see stars from the quick activation, but Rylan doesn't move. I shake his shoulders and receive no response. Bloody hands dragging through my hair, a cracked sob releases from my throat and I rest back on my heels, staring at his lifeless face. This can't be real. I have to be dreaming or someone is playing a cruel trick.

I'm a sticky mess already, so I might as well keep trying. I press my hand against his heart and pulse the magic into him. Rylan's heavy body shakes, quivering, and the light bleeds underneath his skin. "Rylan, you have to wake up," I whimper. "I can't—"

I thrust the magic into him again, forcing a stronger blast that ruptures through his heart. His veins brighten blue, but not from the blood flowing through him as it should. Through the tears and sorrow, I continue to press, shoving enough magic into him that he should wake by now. He remains slumped and unmoving in his own blood.

Out of anger, I slam my fist against his body. "Please!" I shout, sobbing through my teeth. The side of my hand stings, but I do it again, this time knocking against his shoulder. The cabinets he leans against rattle. I slam my fist into that, too, relishing in burning knuckles. "Rylan, please." My voice becomes weaker.

He was the only person willing to pay for Castiel's potions. On a guard's income, along with pooling our money together and some of Chaska's, we paid for my brother to live a pain-free life. No one else would've given that to us without asking for more in return. All the days I spewed filth at him for the terrible things he did to ruin our marriage...they were mistakes. I can't take them back.

I drop my head into my hands and realize that I can't bring him back. The magic inside my body may halt life, it can stop breath, but I can't bring someone back from the dead. There isn't a way to grant life to something that has already passed on, not unless I possess the power of the Void Queen. Rylan's only use now is to become a member of her army of the soulless, those that have passed and received a second-life to serve her for eternity as a rotting corpse.

My shoulders shake uncontrollably. I lean my forehead against his chest and absorb the last of his warmth before the rest of it melts away, deep inside his body to never return. How will I explain this to Chaska, to my family, to Eligius and the rest of the village? They'll suspect me. They'll think I killed him because of my expertise with the palace and all that resides within.

I brought death to their peaceful home.

The cottage rumbles, shaking, and I wonder if the rage erupting from me will bring this entire place down. I wouldn't care. I continue to sob as that steady thump becomes louder, pulsing into my ears, then stops. The world stills once more.

Raising my hands from my face, I catch movement out of the corner of my eye. Someone's here. I scramble away for the fear of Rylan's killer coming to clean up the mess, but it's not a stranger that loathed the guard his entire life. Standing in the entryway to our kitchen, Cloak's eyes soften, but the rest of his face remains cold. Distant.

"Cloak?" I squeak. The fresh cuts on his face leak blood. A scrape, three lines down his left cheek, burn into the scar running from the corner of his mouth. He swallows hard, letting out a low sigh. "What are you doing here?"

My mind blocks off the possibility that he could've done this. I don't want to believe he did; I want to know that he was here to surprise me, to tell me that he followed Gustus's dragon to the village and hid until this moment, but not a single shred of shock cuts through the steely wrath on his face.

He already knows of Rylan's death.

"It had to be done," he says grimly.

I stare into his eyes, unable to move. They were once so sweet and vicious, now I can't come to wonder how I ever ventured into the same room as him. I let him touch me, kiss me, befriend me and lead me into a life I didn't know could exist. Like smoke rising from the smallest of flames, my anger comes slowly. It burns in my toes, rising to my knees, then gathers in my gut to explode.

My bottom lip quivers, but I won't allow the tears to fall. I'm done crying. I leap from my crumpled position on the floor and grab a glass bottle that had fallen onto its side, landing near the table. Without thinking twice, I launch the bottle at his head, screaming through my teeth. "You idiot!" I bellow at the top of my lungs.

Cloak ducks and glass shatters where his head would have been, springing against contact with the wall and exploding, falling to the floor in a heap. He rises slowly, a hand hovering near his face to protect against my rage.

I rush at him, slamming my hands against his chest. Cloak begins to retort, to reason with me, but the Luminary strength shoves through my palms without prior permission. He slams against the wall, the back of his head hitting the stone. While he attempts to blink away the stars, rubbing at the back of his head, I stomp towards him, clenching my fists. If he realizes something is amiss, that my strength is misplaced, Rylan may not be the only dead person in this kitchen.

"He was the only person willing to pay for Castiel's treatments," I shout, jamming my finger back at Rylan's lifeless body. "I wasn't married to him for my own amusement, Cloak. You knew that! Rylan was the only reason my brother hasn't faced pain since the night your shitty aunt paralyzed him." I growl, shoving against his chest once more, and use that as a spring to push myself away.

I pace back and forth in the kitchen, stepping over shards of glass and blood without care. My prints leave a track of red. Providing too much hope for someone that was born a killer—that is my mistake. Ever since things started going right at the palace, I looked for what I could've done wrong. At that time, nothing else seemed to go right, so why should I expect that a prince was responding to my treatments?

I should've known. Cloak is beyond repair.

"He didn't have a place in this world!" Cloak shouts back, his voice steadily rising. "Rylan needed to die." He grabs onto my arm and I shove out of his reach, ripping that touch away like it burns.

I practically rave at the hurt in his eyes. "His life wasn't yours to take," I counter coldly. "I told you that from the start and like everyone else, you didn't listen to me." Shoving one hand against his chest, the emotions start to fall. "You lied to me, Cloak. You let me believe that you wanted me to remain safe, but then you killed him. That's all you've ever done is take lives. You ruin lives and you stomp on happiness."

A hollow laugh leaves him. "You can't honestly believe—"

"I want you to leave."

I cross my arms over my chest, curling into the corner of the kitchen to get as far away from him as I can. The toes of his boots are scuffed with blood, scraped from the fight Rylan put up to keep his life. Cloak killed him. He tossed him around the house, slammed him into the furniture and bent his skull in on the corner of the table. Then, he slashed a dagger across his throat.

Cloak's steely frame quivers underneath my wrath.

"I said I want you to leave," I repeat. "Get out. If I know your mother, then I have strong beliefs that you'll face no punishment for this, anyway. There's no sense in you staying here, so I want you to leave."

"Marie," he says, stopping past my name. I cringe at the sound of it on his lips. Like the identification my parents granted me at birth now belongs to him instead of me.

Turning my head to the side to stare at the massacre in the foyer instead of the kitchen, I add, "I never want to see you again, Cloak. Never."

'That's not true," he counters. With one step, he tries to close the distance between us once more. "Your mind just isn't clear at the moment, Marie. I did this so you could find happiness, so he couldn't hurt you again."

In a flash of a second, I tear the knife from the sheath at my hip, slamming it into the wooden counter between his spread fingers. Without the Luminary accuracy, I wouldn't be able to do that. He jumps back, chest heaving in shock. "Then what the hell was this for?" I snap, reaching underneath my coat to yank the raven pendant free. "Was this just so you could mark your territory?"

I wrench at the cord, breaking the clamp, and toss it at his chest. He scrambles to catch it, wrapping his fingers around the cold silver and holding it in his palm like no piece of the gift belongs to him. That's all the pendant was supposed to be. A gift, not a ward against Rylan or anyone else that wished to hurt me.

He must've planned this from the start. From the second he saw my bruised cheek, the swollen skin underneath my eye. Cloak never cared for Rylan; he hated the guard the entire time, but I never saw it coming to this. I thought he would listen to me. He told me he wouldn't kill him. After that, I held his hand and comforted him during another of our foolish meetings.

Cloak's troubles descend much deeper than I originally thought. This...killing others just for the hell of it, that is out of my realm of expertise. I can't do this anymore. Cloak killed Rylan to grant me happiness, but I cannot grasp onto that sense of freedom without knowing that the man now without breath, slumped on the ground, deserved a second chance. As I believed the prince did.

He's out of second chances now. Very quickly, all of them were spent.

"This is yours," he pleads, sticking out his shaking arm towards me with the pendant locked against his palm. His blood-stained fingers wrap around the silver. "Please, if anything...just take it."

Fighting a wave of nausea, I stare him down. Drawing back, away from the pendant, I look to the floor. Memorizing Cloak's features any longer might throw me down a hole I'll never have the strength to climb out of. A very real, very deep part of me refuses to stop the regrettable words about to tumble out of my mouth. "I know what will make me happy, Cloak," I say in a cracked whisper. "I demand you to leave and never come back."

"Marie—"

"Tell your mother our deal is over. You're cured and I'm not necessary to keep trapped in the palace anymore." I sniff, trying to gather my strength. "You got your happiness, Jett. All I'm left with is a dead husband."

I will strength into my bones to push my hip away from its permanent resting place against the cabinets. My boots squelch in Rylan's blood and I kneel in front of him, taking the tags around his neck that I know he wears every single day. They're stuffed underneath his shirt, sprinkled and lathered in a layer of sticky, cold blood. Hands shaking, I remove the silver clamp and take the chain in my grasp, reading the carved letters over the simple plate.

Cloak doesn't move as I slam them down onto the counter and will myself to meet his nervous stare. "Take these to the queen of Rivian," I snap. "She'll wish to know what you've done."

Suddenly, all the minuscule worries from before drift away. I wipe the blood away from Rylan's face with my sleeve, trying to restore some of his former glory. His skin is too pale, eyes too lifeless. I press onto his eyelids carefully, closing them into an eternal sleep. To think, only hours ago I rode on the back of a dragon and worried I would never see Gustus again.

Now...my husband lies before me. Dead.

Cloak's presence halts in the opening of the kitchen. "Is there something else you need to say?" I practically shout over my shoulder.

He tosses the silver pendant into a pile of glass shards on the floor. The rough edges hardly roll before finding their final resting place on the edge of a large chip. His next words are not what I expect. "You are incapable of doing anything that benefits you, Marie. Rylan walked all over you, and you might've done the same to him, but this marriage never should've happened." He backs away as I stand slowly, too close to another bottle to throw at his head. "Maybe one day, you'll thank me."

Cloak Terravale spins on his heel, broad shoulders tensing as he storms out of the cottage and shuts the door behind him. At least he took Rylan's tags.

My heart is irreplaceably broken. Alone with my dead husband, I collapse to the floor and sob into my hands. A heavy pressure weighs against the center of my chest, sorrow bleeding underneath skin. In just a short matter of time, I have lost more than I originally thought. How foolish of me to think I gained something from this experience.

Rylan never stood a chance.

The prince said he did this for me, yet I can't help but wonder if he did this to prove something to himself. Either way, he helped me realize one simple fact. Cloak Terravale lives up to his name and my father's stories. He's as heartless as they claim him to be.