“She has to die,” Trent said, his voice close and rasping in my ear. “I heard them. My father. My father mended her,” he agonized, and his grip tightened. “She can start it up again! Not now! I won’t let her!”

His arm muscle bunched, and as pain struck through me, I heard my last breath gurgle.

“Let go,” Ceri pleaded, and I saw her dress. “Trent, stop it!”

“They called her kin!” Trent shouted. “I watched her take a demon’s name. She was summoned out under it!”

“She’s not a demon,” Ceri demanded. “Let her go!” Her braid slapped me as she bent over us and tugged at his fingers. “Trenton, let her go! She saved Quen. She saved all of us. Let her go! She’s not a demon!”

His grip loosened, and as I gasped, retching almost, he shoved me away from him.

I fell against the tombstone that he had hammered my head against, and I held it, fingers shaking as I pulled lungful after lungful of air into me, holding my neck and trying to find a way to breathe that didn’t hurt. “She might not be a demon,” Trent said from behind me, and I turned. “But her children will be.”

I slumped back against the stone, feeling the blood drain from me. My children…

Ceri was kneeling beside him, her hands on him as she felt for damage, ready to hold him back if he tried to finish the job. But all I could do was sit in the sun and stare. “What?” I rasped, and he laughed bitterly.

“You’re the only female witch my father fixed,” he accused, taking the red ribbon from his neck and letting it fall to the ground. “Lee can’t pass on the cure. It’s in the mitochondria. You’re the only one who could start it all up again. But I’ll kill you first!”

“Trenton, no!” Ceri exclaimed, but he was too weak to do anything.

Staring at him, I felt my reality start to crumble. God, no. It was too much.

“Trent,” Ceri was saying, kneeling between us, trying to distract him. “She saved us. You have a cure waiting in your labs because of her. We can be whole again, Trent! Kill her, and you stain our beginning. You lose everything! Stop fighting them. It’s killing us!”

From under the mat of his hair, Trent seethed, his eyes trying to burn me where I sat. I felt dirty, unclean. Filthy.

“Your father saved her because he was friends with her father,” Ceri rushed. “He didn’t know what it would do. It’s not your fault. It’s not her fault. But she gave you the way to make us whole today. Right now.” Ceri hesitated, then added, “Perhaps we deserved what happened.”

Trent’s attention tore from me, landing on Ceri. “You don’t believe that.”