Chapter Forty-One #2
There was a dullness to his eyes and a heaviness to his lids, as if all the effort he had left went to holding them open and focusing them on me.
“Heroin feels different than I thought it would.” His chest rose and fell in odd, stilted movements. “I think…warmer, maybe. Did you kill him?”
“He’s dead,” I confirmed. His eyes closed again. “Open your eyes! Damnit, Carter, open them!”
He squinted at me and gasped. “I’ll tell you a secret,” he whispered. “I…let you win…that chess match.” He tried to smile.
“Bastard. W-why are you bleeding?” I asked. A thickness—a strain—crept into my voice. My eyes burned.
He didn’t answer me, but there was a dagger discarded beside him, as if Charles had been in such a hurry to get to me that he’d left it behind. That coward ambushed him, drugged him, and stabbed him in the back. I was sure of it. Rook never would have fallen prey to him otherwise.
“Don’t you dare die, you fucker!” I shook him again, and a tear dripped onto his collarbone. “Open your eyes!”
I finally understood just how much blood was on the ground and on me.
For the second time in my life, someone I loved was bleeding out in front of me, their blood sticky between my fingers.
I realized then that this was love—pain.
Loss. My mother. Gray. There was no scenario in which I cared for anyone, in which it didn’t eventually lead to my destruction.
He tried to hold on, those breaths spacing further and becoming more of a struggle.
“Goddamnit, Carter!” I clamped his face in my hands and watched his lips turn blue, but there was so much blood. There were drugs moving inside him with every heartbeat he had left. No kiss was going to save him this time, not from dying, not from the mess I’d dragged him into.
I felt her before I saw her, a presence even colder than me creeping up behind me.
“No.” I refused to look, refused to take my eyes off Rook, as if my gaze alone could keep him alive. She drew closer until I could feel the slight weight of her at my back. “You can’t have him, you heartless bitch! He’s mine.”
“Let go, Austin. It’s his time.”
I whirled on her and fell speechless. She was even more beautiful than I remembered, a dark entity with hair that fell down her back and moved like shadows in the wind.
Then I remembered who the fuck I was looking at and grasped the dagger Charles had left behind. I rose to my feet.
“I’m going to kill you.”
Whatever look I wore, whatever rage she saw about to rewrite the kind of evil I’d commit, made her back up a few steps.
I advanced on her, the spell I’d read so many times coming in fits—in Italian and English—broken and haphazardly spewed at her.
Even imperfectly cast, a circle lit around us, the light of fire bouncing off bricks and dumpsters.
Her flaming eyes flared once as I slit my arm and coated the blade in blood, as I wiped tears from my cheeks and mixed it like I was about to unlock some alchemical secret on the metal of that blade.
I didn’t stop incanting, and when I cornered her like an animal, she went perfectly still. She tilted her head, deciding something.
“You love him.”
“Of course I fucking love him! You wouldn’t know anything about that. All you do is take and leave pain behind!”
“Then kill me.” Her voice lilted over the crackle of fire. “You need a sacrifice. All you have to do is let him die.”
I held the blade between us, but I glanced over my shoulder at Rook still hanging on by a weak thread.
Time distorted, not just that moment, but the strange stretch of the past few months.
I’d wanted to kill him almost as much as I wanted the woman before me dead.
There should have been hesitation now. No, there should have been decision.
I should have thoughtlessly rammed it into her heart.
But Rook’s breaths were nearly invisible now.
I couldn’t tell if I was imagining them, and the last time I’d felt so powerless, I’d watched my mother slip away.
I didn’t have to let him slip away now.
I stalked forward and pressed the tip of the blade into her throat. “Tell me how to save him.”
She did not flinch. Her eyes remained steady, glowing in the dark.
“No.”
“I’ll kill you.”
“It still won’t save him.”
I willed myself to finish it. A few inches of enchanted metal piercing something vital in her and she would be gone. I would avenge my mother.
But Rook would be gone, just like her, just like Gray.
A gaping hole left behind by the love I was foolish enough to let myself feel for them.
I never seemed to learn my lesson. I pressed the blade a little harder, and something black and wispy curled out of her neck.
My hand ached from clutching the hilt of the dagger. My knuckles strained.
I tossed it on the ground with a clang.
“Fuck you, you evil cunt.” I whipped back around and fell beside Rook, my hands skimming over his body, trying to find a way to bring him back to me. His heart beat faintly under my palms, life escaping faster.
I had life to spare.
I could channel death—decimate my enemies with the power she left behind. But it wasn’t the only thing she gave me. I had lives—plenty of them. I could command life, too. It had to be enough.
I pressed my hands against his chest and tried to find the place inside me opposite the one where I harnessed death. A golden glow, pulsing and waiting to bloom into something new.
Waiting to bring me back.
And that had to be enough to give him.
It chased away the cold as it flowed through me and into him.
Come on, you bastard.
Wake. Up.
Color suffused his face, a rosy, lively tint. His heartbeat became bolder.
“You’re a fighter. Wake up, Carter!”
The flames went out around us, but Death did not retreat.
Whatever wounds Rook had suffered, whatever poison lived in his veins, healed, and his breaths came in strong inhales and easy exhales.
“Maybe you aren’t so lost after all,” Death said.
I turned, but she was gone.