“You find an opening, you take it. Aim for the head.” His laugh turns into a violent, hacking fit. Worse than before. Longer. He pitches forward on one hand. When he coughs again, blood splatters onto the grass and down his chin.

“What’s wrong with him?” Alice jerks back.

William starts toward Jonas, but Sel holds out a hand. “You know you can’t stop this.”

William’s face contorts. Even if Jonas tried to kill us both, it goes against everything in him to watch someone suffer.

The Liege’s face is turning a deep red color, like someone choking. He sits back, clawing at his own throat, breaking the skin. Alice screams and scrambles further away. Blood streams like tears down the inner and outer corners of Jonas’s dark eyes.

“He intentionally broke his Oaths,” Sel explains, a mixture of disdain and disgust on his features. “Oath of Fealty, Oath of Service—”

“Oath of Valor, too.” Jonas wipes a shaking hand across his mouth. Sweat has gathered on his brow, and his pulse leaps against his neck. He repeats his Oath in a gurgling, halting voice. “ ‘I swear to never knowingly allow my Awakened sovereign… to come to injurious harm.’ That one hit… as soon as I told Kizia where to find you.”

He coughs again, this time falling forward to vomit a pool of dark blood onto the grass.

My stomach turns at the sight and at the acceptance on Jonas’s face. He knew what would happen here. He knew his death was coming.

Sel watches the scene unfold, eyes unreadable. “He swore to uphold those Oaths. And swore to accept the consequences for breaking them.”

I’d seen what happened to Ramirez when he lunged for me in the Order’s van. I know what an Oath does when its owner consciously takes action with the intent to harm me.

Which is why I am prepared for what happens next.

Silver-and-blue flames erupt around Jonas’s throat. The Oath’s power does not visibly burn him, but he screams as it spreads down his chest. Jonas turns onto his back, letting the flames cover his body. With one trembling hand, he scrabbles at something around his neck, barely manages to yank it out. Wraps his hand around it. The mage flame roars higher, blue at its core and silver reaching ten feet in the air. Alice can’t see it, but William, Sel, and I watch the aether of Jonas’s death light the yard.

Then, with a great sigh, they extinguish.

When we look down, a shining necklace with two coins lies atop a large, body-shaped pile of silver-and-gray ash.

27

ALICE SOBS INTO her hand. She hadn’t seen the mage flames like we had, but she’d seen a man struggle against his own body, bleeding and vomiting life into the grass around him. That’s bad enough.