Chapter 77
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
Ellery
While anguish swelled in my chest and a silent scream of agony careened around my mind, I didn’t give voice to it. Instead, tears slid down my face and dripped off my chin.
Billy fell beside his mother and embraced her as Ruby rocked forward. She rested her forehead against her daughter’s and caressed Scarlet’s pallid cheeks while pleading for her daughter to come back.
“Please don’t leave me too. Oh, baby girl, I love you. I love you so much.”
I hunched over as I hugged my middle and tried to breathe through the sorrow crushing my chest. I wanted to reach for Scarlet too. But I didn’t. While I’d loved her deeply, my grief wasn’t the same as Ruby’s, and she deserved this moment with her child.
I closed my eyes as I tried not to lose it. When Tucker gripped my shoulder and squeezed it, I lifted my face to his. The sympathy in his eyes was nearly my undoing.
Ruby bent to kiss her daughter’s forehead, then her nose. As her lips settled against her daughter’s, Scarlet’s hand twitched. Tucker’s grip tightened on my shoulder.
“Did you see that?” I cried.
I restrained myself from grasping Ruby’s shoulders and shoving her back, but I had to get her out of the way. Had I imagined that? Was I just hoping for a miracle, or had her fingers really moved?
“I saw it,” Tucker said as he released my shoulder and knelt beside me.
Ianto grasped Ruby’s shoulder to pull her away, but her grief was so intense that she didn’t hear our words. When she tried to fight him, the giant knelt beside her.
“She moved,” he whispered. “Ruby, she moved.”
“Let her go, Mother. Let her go,” Billy encouraged.
It took a few seconds for Ruby to release her death grip on her daughter. Unwilling to trust my ability to find a pulse, I bent forward and rested my hands over Scarlet’s heart. There, deep in her chest cavity, I detected the faintest beat.
My gaze flew up to Ruby’s. “She’s alive. She has a heartbeat, but she’s lost a lot of blood.”
The sound Ruby made next was so joyful that it brought fresh tears to my eyes, but it would never erase my memory of the other one. Still, I was exuberant as Ianto yelled for a stretcher. Ruby and Billy went with Scarlet as the amsirah carried her away.