Her room is growing darker as evening turns closer to true night, and she’s right where we left her on her bed. She’s shifted a little in her sleep, curled up on one side, almost in the fetal position.
I can only imagine how tired she must be after everything that happened today. It was supposed to be a triumph, this plan. It was supposed to end with her sister and her sister’s little boy free of Julian.
Instead, there’s just death hanging over everything like a shadow, and the shattered remnants of River’s heart to put back together.
I watch her for a little while, taking in the matted mess of her hair and the way the light from the streetlights outside cast shadows on her skin, making her tattoos look almost like wounds in the darkness.
She huffs out a small breath, and I finally cross to the bed. I toe my shoes off and lie down with her, and something in me settles a bit just from being close to her.
River needs her rest, so I won’t disturb her. But I hope she can feel that she’s not alone, that she’s safe and I’m here for her, no matter what.
We all are.
3
River
Julian stands at the mouth of the alley outside the church, fury and frustration on his face. It’s stark and harsh, twisting his features into a mask that makes him look even more like a villain than I already think he is.
The sounds of the fighting in the church are loud, but they seem very far away. Like they’re echoing down the alley from a distance, the noise growing tinny and distorted by the time it reaches my ears.
Everything stands out in vivid detail. The sunlight is harsh, even though the alley is shaded a bit by the buildings on either side of it. Hannah’s breathing is loud in my ear, and I can feel her panting from the mad dash out of the church.
I can tell it’s a dream.
A nightmare.
Some dreams are more muted, hazy, with an almost mist over them, but this is nothing like that. This is like being right back there in that alley, watching it all go down again, the same as I did the first time.
I stand there, Hannah at my back, her son behind her, and I tell Julian that Hannah is my sister, and her business is my business, no matter what he wants to think about it.
He wants to shoot me.
I can see it even clearer in this nightmare than I did when it happened in real life. That rage, that hate. He wishes he’d shot me when I was in his basement, so he could have avoided all of this shit. But it’s even worse now because he thought he was going to get something out of our bargain—a connection to the Kings of Chaos by marriage—and I’m here trying to take it all away from him.
Julian pulls the trigger.
Time seems to slow down.
I watch the gun fire, the recoil making his arm jerk back just a slight bit. It’s a good shot, all things considered. The bullet flies through the air, heading right for me, right for my heart.
But then I feel Hannah move. She dives in front of me, intercepting the bullet before it can find its intended mark.
It hits her hard, and she goes down even harder, blood already blooming on the fabric of her dress and pooling to stain the pavement where she lands.
Julian curses violently.
I go down to my knees at Hannah’s side, ignoring Julian when he lunges forward to grab Cody and book it the fuck out of there. That’s not the part I care about.
I care about the pain on Hannah’s face, the dimness of the light in her eyes. The way she trembles with the loss of blood and life.
It’s just a nightmare, but it feels so real, and the pain of losing her lances through my heart like a knife.
There’s blood on me, blood in her sandy hair, and her dark blue eyes start to lose some of their light and color, almost like it’s draining out of her along with everything else.
I watch Hannah try to reach for me, and her hand trembles and loses momentum halfway through, all the strength gone from her body.
No.
The thought hits me with the force of a freight train.
No. Not this time.
If it’s a dream, then it’s all in my head. And if it’s all in my head, then I can do something about it. I can change it. I can rewrite the rules.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath, trying to breathe past the ragged hole of loss and grief in my chest.
“No,” I whisper, almost like I’m using the sheer force of my will to rewind time and make things different. “Not like this. Please, not like this.”
The weight of Hannah’s body disappears from my lap, and when I open my eyes, things have shifted. It’s like I’m in my body but also outside of it, watching Hannah, Cody, and myself come running into the alley.
I can feel my lungs burning like I’m also doing the running, but being outside of myself lets me pull more strings. I reach down and grab Hannah’s hand, pulling her more firmly behind me this time.
Julian still sees her, and the fury cuts across his face like a vicious mask just like it did before. He still pulls his gun and aims it right for me.
My mind races. If he shoots me and Hannah doesn’t get in the way, what will happen then? I’d give my life for my sister in a heartbeat, so I don’t even flinch when Julian fires this time.
I just tighten my grip on Hannah’s arm, trying to keep her in place.
But it doesn’t work. She shoves me to the side hard, and I stumble, letting go of her hand for a split second. That’s all the time it takes for her to take the bullet for me again, going down in the same heap as before.
“No!” I shout. “No. This isn’t right.”
“You should have stayed out of it!” Julian screams. He runs in and grabs Cody. He doesn’t spare a look for Hannah as he escapes the alley.
My chest goes tight as I stand there, watching Hannah die for the third time.
No, goddammit.
There has to be a way.
There has to be something I can do to keep this from happening.
Once more, I force time back, this time a little bit farther. Before we come bursting out of the church. The alley is empty, and I realize I don’t know what Julian was doing before we got there.
Was he waiting for us? Was he trying to make his own escape?
There’s nothing to fill that in with, so as soon as we come pelting into the alley, Julian appears at the mouth of it. He catches sight of us, and his face twists with that familiar anger, the same as all the other times.
We argue, and he fires.
I try to yank Hannah back when she runs forward, but this time she just spins and holds onto me in a hug, her back to Julian as the bullet hits her right between the shoulder blades.
This one is so, so much worse because I can feel it when she jerks in pain. I can hear the labored rattle of her breath and see the pain and anguish in her eyes before she goes down to the ground.
Something warm and wet rolls down my cheek, and I realize I’m crying.
Seeing this over and over again is like ripping away more and more parts of my heart, but I can’t stop. The thought that there’s something I could do to stop this from happening or fix it consumes me, and I can’t accept that it won’t work.
I force time back time and time again.