Chapter 41

I hurried forward to check on Urban, but Yasmin tsked and pointed at me, freezing me into place.

“Oh, no,” she said. “We can’t have you bringing him back to life again. That’s becoming all too tiresome from you two.”

Meanwhile, Allera knelt before her brother so she could cup his face in her hands. “Breathe, Urban, breathe.”

Behind her, Brentley drew his sword. “Yasmin, stop this. Let Vienne and Urban go, now!”

“Or what? You’ll stop me?” Rolling her eyes, Yasmin pointed at him and snapped her fingers. A crack of splintering cartilage followed. Then Brentley’s head tipped drunkenly to the side, his neck broken, before he collapsed to the floor, dead.

Allera gasped, abandoning her choking brother to leap to her husband and try to catch him as he fell, gentling his landing.

“No!” she sobbed. “No, no, no. Brentley...”

Yasmin pointed at her next, immobilizing her in place, just as she had me, making Allera’s body freeze in an awkward position, hunched over Brentley. If she’d been lef