Almost as if someone had already made it inside, as if someone else was safe.
Hope of their safety flared inside of me like a beacon, bright and powerful as the door swung open, and I flung Ryland into its depths without a second look.
“Wyn?” The voice came from somewhere above, and I calmed. Even though Sain’s was not the voice I wanted to hear, it would do for now.
I didn’t stop to see if Ryland was safe, if he was waking up. I didn’t stop to see if Sain was coming to help the boy. I only turned on my heels, framing the door as I faced the wall of creatures that had followed us, faced the blood and carnage I had left behind. Now, it didn’t matter if they followed the flame.
Let them come.
I would burn them all.
My magic reacted without me, flaring into the darkened road in an explosion that rocked the ancient building I stood in then rippled down the old stones of the streets and the stores that had stood there for hundreds of years. It singed the very air as the creatures disintegrated into nothing. The poor people who still walked fled from it, the ones who lay bleeding put out of their misery.
A pang of guilt I never would have felt before roared through me in an angry wave as I moved into the darkness behind me, the heavy wooden door of the space closing with a thud.
I jerked at the sound, regretting what I had done, regretting taking the lives of all those people. All the ones that lay on the street.
I knew they weren’t all dead. I had heard them moan, seen them writhe. I had heard their pain as the poison Edmund had engineered moved through them, awakening their magic, infecting it and turning them into just another of his puppets.
I had lived that nightmare for years, and I didn’t wish it on anyone.
I held to that as I battled the regret that was corrupting me. The guilt at such pointless loss made me wonder if perhaps there had been a way to save them, to help them.
If we could have saved them.
If I could have helped instead of destroyed.
We would never know.
I tried to push away the emotion that kept growing and turned into the dark toward the boy that was writhing as he began to wake up. His body was limp and pained from exhaustion and insanity.
With one hand against his forearm, I plunged him back to sleep, his body lifting itself as my tiny frame hoisted him over my shoulder, carrying him awkwardly as I ascended the stairs toward Sain’s voice and the men who hadn’t left my mind.
I needed to know they were okay. All of them. I need to see them with my own eyes.
My heart pulsed painfully with each step, each one taken at a run before I burst through the ancient, carved door at the top of the narrow stairwell and to the three men I had been so ecstatic to see. Whom I had been so concerned about.
It was nothing like I had expected.
They were there, the three of them. Dramin was bleeding profusely from the neck where he was hunched against the wall. Thom was unconscious and covered in blood I prayed was not his. And in between them was Sain. He cowered against the floor like a beaten dog, his hair mussed, his eyes wide as he looked at me with the green that was darker than I had ever seen it. A green so haunted that everything around me froze.
My shoulders hunched in fear as my heart accelerated, the panic at seeing them, at needing to know if they were okay frozen to my bones as I looked at him.
Then a voice more ice than fear passed from his lips.
“I’ve made a terrible mistake.”
Seventeen
I barely even heard him.
I couldn’t focus on his words, not above the way every muscle in my body tightened, not with the way my pounding heartbeat filled my ears and mixed with the echoes of screams until I was surrounded by them. Surrounded by death. Surrounded by pain.
All I saw was Thom.
Without stopping to think, I rushed into the room, Ryland’s body dropping to the floor with a resounding thunk that echoed in my head, elongating into a bass drum of more pain.
More confusion.
More blood.
Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion as I reached Thom, my shaking hand pressing against him. His skin was as cold as ice, his body as limp and lifeless as though he was dead.
Please don’t let him be dead.
The thought was a vice against my heart, a pulse of pain and anger that threatened to explode out of me.
I had only come to terms with everything, with losing Talon, with understanding the caged personalities I faced, with still loving the seemingly lifeless man before me.
I didn’t want to know what kind of monster losing him would create.
Violently, my magic filled him, rushing through his body in a wave that swallowed him. I checked for organ function, for signs of life, and for his magic. It was a checklist in my head—what to do to save a life or some such nonsense. Except, right then, I couldn’t focus on it.
One by one, I found them—the gentle pulse of his heart, the low gasp of his breath, the calming waves of his magic.