Chapter 34 Elle #3
I stagger to my feet, pulse crashing in my ears. But before I can take a single step, three masked figures stagger forward. Their movements stutter, arms limp, eyes glazed. I see a bigger crowd forming around Sterling.
In front of me, one of them stumbles closer, reaching out to grab me. His fingers twitch more in confusion than menace. There must be Kys in these people too.
I plant my feet. Kaye’s voice echoes in memory. Sterling’s lessons flash through muscle. “Please stay back,” I rasp.
But they keep coming. So I strike the first low punch in the ribs, pivot into the second with a sharp hook. My knuckles burn. The third lunges. I duck and drive my elbow into his gut. He drops. None of them rise. Their bodies curl in on themselves, shaking but alive.
I breathe hard. Smoke burns down my throat. I haul one upright, then another, waving at the other figures still by the entrance. Someone will help. Someone has to.
When the others move to take them, I step back.
That’s when I see her. Clo stands frozen at the top of the stairs.
She looks nothing like the woman who greeted this night with a toast. Her shoulders slope inward.
Her hands tremble faintly at her sides. Her crown of curls have begun to fray, strands rebelling loose like they too refuse to obey her anymore.
She looks hollow, splintered from the inside.
Sterling sees her too. He moves through the fire as if it parts for him. Another unlit lantern swings from his hand. Before I can call his name through the suffocating smoke, he throws it.
The oil catches Clo’s silk gown, most of it sliding off with ease. Still, dark stains spread fast at the ends. She breaks from the spell she was in, shrieks and stumbles.
Sterling lights a match in his hand. His eyes flick to me.
His body goes still. He hesitates for longer this time.
I knit my brows in wonder, then realize he might not burn her while I watch.
Smoke thickens around us, stinging my teary eyes and blurring my vision of the perfect man too far away from me to hold when that’s all I want to do.
The match pinched in his hand loses its flames when they kiss his fingertips. My chest clenches. He didn’t throw the fire at her. I would still love him if he did.
I blink, turning at the sound of Clo’s piercing scream. Fire catches on her as soon as she steps back into the burning pillars. In a panic, she stumbles down the scorched steps, clawing at herself.
In swift strides, Sterling reaches for me and grabs my hand without a word. We run after her.
The silk on her is only slightly singed with little dancing flames, yet she panics as if she’s been engulfed by them. I’ve never seen Clo lose composure. But that’s when I realize that she’s been breathing in the same Kys we have. We’ve all been breathing it in.
The crowd scatters, less and less of them still inside. But Clo barrels past them, staggering through the back doors into the night. She stumbles toward the vineyard, trailing smoke and fire, heading blindly for the cliff closest to the ivory brick walls.
From the thick trellises, a figure steps out from the shadows. “Stop!” the woman shouts, her voice cutting through the smoke and panic.
The world seems to stutter around her. She’s dressed in black from head to toe, and her glasses flash briefly in the firelight. She’s untouched by the flames swallowing the world behind us.
I don’t recognize her, but Clo seems to. Even with the fire licking slowly at her silk train, I see how Clo stumbles, her hand lifting toward the woman as if she’s seen a ghost. I can’t see clearly, not without blinking back the tears fighting against the irritant air.
The fire roars, but the stranger’s voice is clear. “We can end this here, Chloe!” the woman shouts, stepping forward, her voice fierce. “You can still put it out! You can survive this!”
And for a brief, broken moment, Clo calls out a name. “Jade?”
The name carries into the heated air. The smoke crawls higher. Clo trembles where she stands. Her body folds. I think she might stop. I think she might fall to her knees. I think there’s a chance—fragile and flickering—that this could end without more getting hurt.
My breath catches in my throat, tight and painful. Maybe there’s still a way out. Maybe it doesn’t have to end in a cruel way. But a sound cuts through the crackling fire and crashing waves. Fast, heavy footfalls pound into the earth, quicker than thought.
A shadow bursts from the smoke, the sight terrifyingly familiar.
Lix. He sprints through the smoke like a bullet fired from the dark. My teary eyes widen. Terror claws up my throat.
For a heartbeat, the world tilts. Everything blurs except the sight of him. His coat billows behind him. His eyes are locked on Clo.
I know that look. I’ve seen it before. On the face of a child burning beside me.
A boy who wouldn’t let go of our mother’s bleeding body, even when the fire clawed through everything around us.
But the way he’s running now—with everything’s he got—it’s as if the flames from that memory are still chasing him.
No. No, no, no. My heart stops. I move before I think.
“Lix!” I wail, my voice torn raw. My feet slip over dying grass, lungs burning, limbs too slow.
Sterling catches me, wrapping his arms around my waist and holds me without yield. “Elle—” he breathes against my neck, voice cracking. “Stay, please.”
I struggle, cry, and beg. “He doesn’t have to do this!” My throat burns. My tears run. I scream, clutching Sterling’s arms. “Lix! Don’t!”
But my brother never looks back. He’s already too far away for me to reach, too far gone to be stopped. He crashes right into Clo.
She screams, shrill and desperate. And together, they vanish. Off the edge. Into the dark.
The scream that splits the sky is hers. It echoes off the cliffs, folding into the roar of the crashing ocean waves.
His doesn’t come. My baby brother doesn’t scream. The silence he leaves behind is worse than any sound. It cuts through everything. Through the fire. Through my body. Through the memories of who we were. The hope of what we could’ve rebuilt together. All gone.
The vineyard trembles underfoot. The sky above us is covered with smoke. The ocean plays a twisted song along with the fire behind us. Loud enough that I don’t hear the harrowing thud of their fall I brace myself for. The waves might’ve swallowed them whole. The thought ruins me.
Lix is gone. After everything. Our broken, burning home. Our names and lives stolen from us. We finally had a chance.
Sterling turns me in his arms. One around my back, the other cradling my head. I think he’s whispering my name. I think he’s trying to hold me together.
I clutch at him, shaking, gasping for breath. “He promised me… He said he’d make Clo pay. But not like this. Not like this—” I choke out, my words strangled in a sob.
Sterling doesn’t speak. His heart hammers into my bones. He only holds me tighter.
I barely register Stan and Kaye rushing toward us through the smoke, their faces grim.
Fingers pry me gently from Sterling’s hold.
Kaye murmurs words low into my ear, and then I’m being carried into the back of a waiting car.
The door slams, muffling the roar of the fire, sealing us away from the ruins.
I reach for Sterling on instinct, my hands scrabbling against the car window. But he’s still standing out there. A silent, still sentinel lit by ash and smoke.
Kaye pulls me into her arms, her dark hair falling around both of us. “Don’t give up hope, Elle,” she whispers. “More help’s on the way, you hear me? It’s not over. He could’ve survived that fall.”
I don’t answer her. I can’t. All I can do is hold on to her, sobbing so harshly it tears my throat. Still, I hang onto her words like a lifeline.
The car slams into gear and jolts forward, tires screeching against the road.
I curl tighter into Kaye, my whole body shaking.
Somewhere behind us, Sterling will follow.
I know he will. But in this excruciating moment, all I can do is hold on to my friend, and the fragile, flickering faith she places into my bleeding heart.