CHAPTER 59 Repeat Until Death
Day 10
I beat my fists against Tye’s chest.
It felt like my ribs were being pried apart with a crowbar.
Bryn! I shouted, but the channel between us was dead.
The bed squealed like a stuck pig when Tye plunged a knee into its springs. “Roe!” he shouted, voice hoarse, face stark in the swift afternoon light. “Roe, Jesus Christ, wake up!”
He grunted when my punch connected, but held on. “Where’s Bryn?” I demanded incoherently. “Where is he?”
Tye shook me roughly. “What the hell are you on about now?” He pushed away from me, stabbing a hand through his hair.
My breath panted out in the freezing room.
“You’ve been asleep for nearly twenty damn hours,” Tye said.
Twenty hours? Was that how long it’d taken for me to convince Bryn to throw himself at the Gate? It’d take his soul and toss it to Ruhaven, but it was me the Gate was supposed to take. Me that should have traded my soul for Willow’s. Never Bryn.
“You let the room get sloppy with cold. It’s your own damn fault if you’re freezin’ up here, Roe. Twenty hours. What the hell’s gotten into ya? And now you’re beggin’ after Stornoway. Can’t ya make it two damn weeks?”
I reached inside me, struggling to grasp the thread, but it evaporated in my grip.
Because Bryn was suppressing it now.
The room swam as a sob burst from my throat.
Tye lurched to me. “Goddamn, I don’t got time for this. Levi’s missin’, and you’re havin’ a nervous breakdown after two weeks without your boyfriend.” He grabbed my shoulders, half-hugging, half-shaking me. “You’ve only got days to go. Days, and then ya can leave.”
Days until I’d never know Bryn again. Until everything that made him was nothing. Until I killed him.
I shoved Tye. “Get away from me.”
“Fine, Roe.” Tye strode toward the door, paused. “But I’m gonna check on ya in a few hours. Don’t ya be takin’ no twenty-hour trips again.”
I was crawling to the window before the door slammed.
My heart hammered in my ribs, a moth’s wings bleating the light. I wedged the old glass up one painful inch at a time, the wood swollen, paint peeling, and propped it on my shoulders, then shoved my head into January’s frozen light.
And frantically searched for the tree house he said he’d hid in.
Snow blinded the witch trees, banking into frosty mounds. Pines stood awkwardly between the barren twigs and congealed leaves. But in the crowded forest, the old fort was empty.