Chapter Fifteen #2
“No theatrics,” Ainsley added, shooting Ezra a look. “No gore.”
“I’d fancy seeing her blasted apart,” Ike mumbled where he sat on the ground, rubbing his singed boots. “Broke my nose.”
She looked back at me, a sad smile forming on her pretty mouth. “I’m certain you deserved that, Ike.”
“I won’t tell anyone.” I hated pleading, but I wasn’t eager to die. Not here in the woods. Not by Ezra’s hands when he deserved to die by mine. “I’ll run. I was running already, but Julian … I had to try to save him.”
I hadn’t warned him in time, and he’d died because of me. There was nothing left of him but ash.
“I wish you’d kept running, Josephine Haven,” Ainsley murmured, beckoning Ezra.
Ezra approached as if his boots were leaden, his gaze centered on the tree above my head.
“Look at me,” I spit out. “You should at least look at me when you do it.”
With a small mirthless laugh, Ainsley pulled a long knife from her boot, handed it to Ezra, and took a few steps back.
Ezra met my eyes, anguish etched across his face. It made me want to scream at him. How could someone who had killed Julian with such violence, such disgusting malice, have any regrets now?
My confusion and anger became something hot, a flicker as small as a candle’s flame.
I could feel my radiance again.
They should have left the awful insulation over my hands. They should have let it steal the last of my breath from my lungs. Because now … now I was going to kill them all.
I flexed my fingers.
Ezra’s gaze darted to my bound hands, something dawning in his eyes. It wasn’t fear. It was … relief. He looked me right in the eye, steady now.
Hopeful.
“Marshall,” he mouthed silently.
I had no time to be confused. No desire to question the boy with a knife as long as my forearm.
When I released the first whip-crack bolt of radiance, I angled it toward Marshall and caught him square in the chest. He flew back to land in the fire, howling.
The scuffle before me happened almost too quickly to see.
Ezra rushed Ainsley and cracked the handle of the knife against the side of her head with a vicious jab.
She folded instantly, and he caught her and lowered her into the leaves with tenderness that didn’t match Marshall’s terrible keening as his clothes caught fire and, too stunned to move, he began to burn.
“Ezra!” I yelled, warning him despite myself.
He glanced at me instead of Ike, who tackled him away from Ainsley’s prone form.
This wasn’t a boyish fight; Ike fought to kill.
A blade flashed in the firelight, but I couldn’t tell who controlled it.
Shaking violently, I levered my back against the tree and managed to stand.
There wasn’t much radiance left in me, and I was scared to use it again, scared to lose it if I pushed too hard when it had only just begun to rekindle within me.
Distantly, I noticed that Marshall had stopped howling. He was dead.
“Go!” Ezra shouted, muffled by Ike’s meaty arm around his throat. They rolled toward me, and I shuffled out of the way, clumsy and off-balance with my arms bound before me.
“I can’t exactly run off into the woods with my hands tied,” I shouted back.
Ezra twisted out of Ike’s grip and punched him. The knife had fallen.
He wasn’t trying to kill Ike.
It was almost like he wouldn’t.
Couldn’t.
Shaking my head, I rushed into the fray as best I could, fumbling for the knife. But it was too hard to hold. I had to do the only thing I knew, no matter how badly I wanted to cradle my radiance close to my heart, safe and tucked away from their loathsome insulation.
“Move!” I shouted, giving Ezra only a breath of warning. He rolled away from Ike, and I unleashed another bolt at Ike’s bloody, terrible mouth.
Ike’s eyes bulged and exploded like grapes squeezed in a fist. He collapsed to the ground, scorched mouth frozen in a rictus of pain.
Horror curdled in me, stilling my heartbeat, freezing my blood.
And then I screamed.
And screamed.
My body moved on its own. I stumbled back from the gore, from his grotesque grimace. My back hit a tree. I crashed to the ground.
The sound wouldn’t stop. Screams upon screams. Shrill and wet.
“Josephine.” Panting, Ezra approached me with the knife. I couldn’t fully connect to my radiance. It fought me, curling up inside like a beaten animal. Only wisps of blue light danced around my fingers, but he flinched. “Please. I’m trying to free your hands.”
The light intensified, tried to congeal into ropes and fingers. A stray edge lashed at his bare arm, and he let out a ragged cry.
I was hurting him. I didn’t care.
He didn’t seem to care either. As if pushing against a tide, he crept toward me. Sweat ran down the sides of his face as he found my hands and rested them against his lap to carefully saw through the twine. The blade fell from his hands into the leaves.
“Go,” he choked out. “Run.”
“I don’t know where to go!” I screamed at him. I had to get away from Ike’s empty sockets, from Marshall’s charred flesh.
I had to run far away—before Ainsley woke up and discovered what I’d done. What Ezra had done.
And I couldn’t escape on my own. Not here in the woods, in the wild unknown.
“Get up,” I snapped, pushing myself to my feet with the help of the tree and showing him my hands. Harmless, plain hands. Cold, trembling fingers. “And show me where to go.”