Chapter 39 Ophelia
OPHELIA
Chaos around me. Sound and movement, shadows and light and pain. Searing, hot pain.
Someone shouts orders and I blink, the bright light above me blinding.
I turn my head, and a moment later, the pain bleeds away, numbness a physical thing filling me up from the tips of my fingers and toes into my limbs, my torso, taking me under a veil of nothingness until it’s quiet and dark and still. So still.
I see Hamish. He’s lying in that circle of blood. He’s dead. I know.
Sinistral. The Fox house. The pool. As a little girl, I’d been so excited to see our new neighbors building a pool.
Now all I recall is the freezing water.
He was going to kill Silas.
Silas, who’d come for me again. He’s always coming for me. Rescuing me.
But I slid out from under Ethan’s shoe and this time, I rescued Silas and the bullet ripped into me rather than him.
Light flickers momentarily, the pain beginning, but it’s gone again and I’m lying in a huge bed with feathers all around me. White feathers. Thick blankets. I’m wearing white, too. Everything is white and bright and light and I’m floating in this bed of Esmerelda’s feathers. I’m sure they’re hers.
“O? O, can you hear me?”
Silas.
I blink, flashes of darkness breaking into the serenity of light. Pain comes again, the bullet setting my skin on fire.
“Ophelia.”
I turn my head. There he is. Silas. But he’s soaked in blood.
My blood.
“Wake up, sweetheart.”
Warm hands on my face. Calloused thumbs trying to be gentle as they wipe away my tears.
“Wake up.”
I’m trying.