Elijah couldn’t get the image out of his head, of the blood spewing from his Verika’s mouth.

You failed her. He eyed his reflection in the bathroom mirror. The others waited outside, in their bedroom. Waiting for him to get it together, to finally face what he had run from for so long.

He could do this. He couldn’t afford not to.

Verika’s pained expression flashed through his head once more, and he growled.

This was Mistress Black’s fault. She was the reason for all of Verika’s pain and suffering.

So help him God, nothing and no one hurt his mate. Ever. And he would be damned if he let any further harm come to her because he was too much of a pussy to face his fears.

Magic be damned. He was going to save his woman.

He told himself that over and over again, using it as his strengthening mantra, as he inhaled a deep breath, let it out, squared his shoulders, and at last walked into the bedroom.

Everyone glanced up at once. Verika gave him a concerned, questioning look.

He smiled at her. The expression was a bit tight, though he’d meant for it to be comforting. “Let’s start with trying to break the spell on my memories.”

The choice to go through with this at all was his, Verika had insisted, despite what the others said. Though it made sense they would vote for this option over the other. Potentially alerting Mistress Black that they knew the location of her hideout was too risky. Breaking his memory sealant was the safer alternative, even if the thought of doing so made his knees shake and his pulse race.

You sure? Verika said through their mate-bond.

He nodded, determination turning his will to iron. I’m sure.

No, he still wasn’t sure about magic. No, he wasn’t sure whether he ever would be sure and secure around it.

But the one thing he was sure of sat right in front of him, gazing at him with more love than he thought he’d ever deserve.

And he wasn’t about to let her down again.

Verika was officially an asshole. Her shaking hands and her wrenching gut told her so.

She sat on her legs next to Elijah, who lay before her on the floor of their bedroom. He was pale as the moon, and though he put on a brave face, his hands kept clenching and unclenching—an obvious effort at trying to conceal how badly they trembled.

Oh, Elijah. Please forgive me.

Well, as much as one person could forgive another for making them relive every horrible experience they’d ever been through. Which, she was pretty certain, would happen once she broke the seal of her mate’s memories. Memory spells could be brutal. Once the seal was broken, all of his repressed memories would come back, including those blocked by his own mind to protect his sanity.

Like she said—asshole, with a capital A.

“Can we get this over with?” Elijah rasped. “I’d rather rip the Band-Aid off than prolong it, if you know what I mean.”

She did, because she felt exactly the same way. “I’m sorry,” she mouthed.

He took her hand, squeezed it. His grip was clammy and slick, and a reminder of how much he was sacrificing to save her from pain.

God, she couldn’t screw this up. Messing with people’s memories was a shaky business, at best. Sometimes they ended up forgetting who they were, or even had the most important times of their lives erased. She knew of one man who’d paid a witch to make him forget about his wife leaving him for another man, and she’d ended up erasing all of his memories after the age of two. While the mission had been accomplished, he’d had to move in with his parents because he’d mysteriously “gotten amnesia” and could only respond and think like a toddler.

She thought about what would happen if she accidentally did that to Elijah. If she wiped out all the memories of their time together.

Her stomach, which had grown increasingly more upset the closer they drew to casting the spell, threatened to send back up everything she’d nibbled on at dinner. The words “I can’t do this” almost rolled off her tongue, but she bit it, holding her fear back. She would not allow it to rule her. Though she’d insisted on trying to track down the wards used to hide Mistress Black’s lair instead of performing a memory-retrieval spell, Elijah had refused, stating “the spell could backfire and alert her that someone had found her.” Then she might uproot and hide out elsewhere, or go dark completely. If they lost her now, they might never be able to find her again.

So, here they were, sitting in their bedroom, about to perform one of the most dangerous spells known to witchery.

Don’t. Screw. This. Up, she told herself for the millionth time.

“Close your eyes,” she said. “And though it sounds useless, try to relax.”

He chuckled dryly.

Yes, I know that seems next to impossible, given the circumstances, she said privately through their mate-bond. But the magic will work better if your mind is relaxed. Try meditating, like I taught you.

I don’t think I can calm my thoughts.

Try. She almost rolled out a Yoda reference to when he was beating Luke’s ass on that swamp planet, but she refrained. Now was not the time for jokes, though it was definitely one of those times where she felt if she didn’t laugh, she might just cry. But there was no time, or use, for that either. She had to get serious.

If she didn’t, things could go south quickly.

With one last lingering, loving glance at her, Elijah closed his eyes, inhaled slowly through his nose and out through his mouth. Verika waited a minute, until the jittering of his nerves settled a bit through their bond. Then she lifted her hands, letting them hover over his head, and began to silently chant.

The spell was in Old Gaelic, making it of Irish descent. It was always surprising to find out which country had come up with certain spells. Spells, of course, could be translated, but they held the most power when you used the original language they had been written in. In one of her nerdier moments, she’d made a “spell-ology tree” for her office back at DPI headquarters, similar to a genealogy tree in that it traced the roots of every spell she could find. The research had been fascinating, though she’d earned a few eye rolls and head shakes from her peers. To a lot of them, their gifts were boring, their day jobs something they had to do to live. For Verika, her gifts were precious, and she lived for her job. She’d been lucky, she knew. Most people went through life dreading the nine-to-five, waiting for retirement so they could begin to live. Satine and her parents had taught her to be herself and never settle. “Just because everyone else is content to live life like a zombie doesn’t mean you have to.”

She was thankful for that wisdom, that support, now. Without it, she might not have had the courage to pursue her dream of using her talents full-time. Her time at the DPI wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, but it had trained her well for the spell she was about to perform.

With shaking hands and a deep breath, she sent up a silent prayer and began to crack open the spell locked around Elijah’s memories.