Chapter 65 Complications & Consequences – Atticus #2
My skin prickles and I'm analyzing every fucking shadow. Every sound.
Where is the threat?
Ellie skids to a stop on her approach, her jaws closing on the hem of my jacket and pulling forcefully.
"Ellie," I chastise. "Ellie, go back!"
Where is the—
Fuck.
I suck in a breath, turning to face the house as the night is shattered.
I drop to my knees and throw myself over Ellie just as the earth heaves. A wall of heat slams into my back, almost flattening me.
Ellie muscles free and circles me, barking, growling, her hackles raised.
Sweat stings in my eyes, and horror locks its hands around my throat as I spin in a slow circle to face the wreckage.
I gape at the shimmering orange-red glow through the trees. At the roar of flame and the smoke choking the trees.
"No…"
I can't see the chimneys. I can't see the arch.
A bloodcurdling cry rips through the night behind me.
He barrels past, shoulder clipping mine as he races headlong toward the explosion.
"Florence!" Julian screams. "Florence!"
The sound of her name in his throat—desperate and broken—is worse than the fire. Worse than the destruction. Worse than anything Ambrose could ever do to me.
Because Julian isn't screaming for a ghost.
He's screaming for the woman he loves. The one he's about to lose all over again, for the hundredth time, because his mind won't let him keep her dead.
And I can't save him from it.
I can't save anyone.
Florence asked me to protect them, and I promised her I would.
I've broken every fucking promise that ever mattered.
My heart doesn't have time to break—it just cracks down the middle and keeps beating anyway as I wrench myself from the shock and chase after him.
"Eleven, go back!" I shout the command as forcefully as I need to, to make her listen, hoping Eli's right behind and can grab hold of her.
I sprint after Julian, bulldozing through the overgrown branches in the trail to catch up to him, but I've never seen him move so fucking fast.
"Florence!"
I'm almost on him when I see the house, or what's left of it.
A lump swells in my throat, and I choke on it. On the grief and smoke and the bitter taste of failure as I run.
Flames pour from the front windows, staining the red brick arch black.
"Julian!" I call, throwing an arm out, almost within reach. "Jules, stop!"
A high, keening whistle rises from the burning skeleton of the Ashford estate—the sound of metal warping and something about to give.
It's the fucking push I need to get my hands on him.
"Damn it," I shout through my teeth, getting my hands on him to haul him backward and yank him down.
I throw myself over his body as the second explosion hits me like a wrecking ball.
My vision goes first. It's black and bleak, and it feels like I've been hit by a Mack truck.
My ears ring, and there's no pain. Just pressure.
I feel my pulse thudding in my right temple, hard and fast.
My fingers twitch, trying to find Julian, but I think I'm on my back.
"Ju…lian…"
My mouth tastes like copper.
"Julian…" I try again, fighting for consciousness like it's the last thing I'll ever do, because it might be. "Ju—"
The pain hits all at once, and my stomach heaves at the force of it.
It's burning and aching and fucking searing.
When I reach up with a half-dead arm to touch the side of my face, my fingers find something wet. Soft. Wrong.
I gag.
"Fuck, Atticus!"
It's Eli. I know it's him, even though the flutter of movement over me is stained red and blurry as he removes his jacket and beats at something on my leg.
What is that smell?
I know that smell.
Burning flesh.
I try to get up, but the world spins violently, and my body is too heavy.
"No, stay there. Don't move," Eli shouts.
"Ju…lian…"
A knot forms between his brows.
I try to point toward the house, and my blood chills when his heartrending scream cuts through the roar of flames.
"Florence!"
It gives me the strength I need to move.
"Go!" I shout at Eli. "Go!"
A girlish scream from the nurse behind me precedes Ellie coming to my side, sniffing around me as I dig my hands into the ground to get stable enough to push up onto my knees, then my feet.
"S'okay," I slur as the world tips and the tiny nurse tries to catch me before I can fall.
I latch onto her arm to keep my footing, trying to blink through the red blur in my vision.
Ellie pushes her nose against a gnarly burn in my leg, and I hiss in pain.
"Where's Julian?" the nurse asks in a panic.
"No!" we hear him roar, and I limp forward to find Elijah dragging his father away from the flaming carcass of the house.
"My wife!" he bellows into the smoke and fire. "My wife!"
Julian falls to his knees, a raw cry of anguish pushing brokenly from his chest while Elijah holds him back from joining Florence's ghost in the flames.
"No…" he sobs. "Please, no!"
I finally make it to them and almost fall on my face when I try to bend to my knees.
Elijah cries softly into the back of Julian's jacket, holding him around his middle while he wails.
"We have to…" I cough, my throat burning like hell until I hack up a dark glob that tastes like blood and smoke. "We have to…get out of here."
Another coughing fit hits. Harder this time, and every barking sound comes with a nauseating dizziness that threatens to drag me down.
"Atticus?"
Ellie barks somewhere far away. The fire roars. It's hot. So hot. But everything is distant. Muffled. Fading.
Like I'm sinking underwater.
There's something warm in my throat. Something wet and thick that shouldn't be there.
"Atticus!"
Damn.
I was supposed to save her. I was supposed to save all of them.
The back of my head thuds on the ground, and I stare up, trying to draw in oxygen around the thickness clogging my airway.
"Dad!" Elijah's voice cracks. "Dad, help me!"
The soot-choked sky above is so dark I can't see the moon or the stars. It's just an endless expanse of darkness. It jars as my body is shaken and my vision fades.
"Atticus!"
Elijah was wrong.
We hadn't lost everything.
Not yet.
But as the dark swallows me whole and her face is the last thing I see behind my eyelids, I realize something that cuts deeper than any shrapnel ever could.
I never told her.
And now I won’t…
My throat closes.
Won’t…ever…
My heart thuds hard and slow.
…ever get the chance.
Continue the story of Aurora and her Painted Sinners in the third and final book, Red Queen Painted Black. Thank you so much for reading