I ran past the bodies to her side and demanded that she look at me. If she didn’t get her breathing under control, she would pass out. And from the coldness settling in my bones, I wouldn’t be able to help her much longer. I took her shoulders, thankful she was wearing black so she couldn’t see the bloodstains I’d left. Some of the darkness subsided, leaving only the whisper of shadows in my mind. “Look at me.”
Her lashes fluttered open, gaze bouncing from me to a point at my back. “At me.”Not at them. Look at me.Her eyes locked onto mine. “Take a deep breath.”
“I-I-I . . .”
“Deep.”
My hand rose and fell as she inhaled a short, shaky breath.
“Deeper. Deeper. Good. Hold it there. And release. Again.”
I didn’t let her stop until her breathing became even and steady and deep. Her eyes had flecks of brown. How had I never noticed before? Somehow, her lavender scent broke through the stench of blood and death, leaving my tongue tingling.
Damn, she was beautiful.
Her eyes flicked over my shoulder. “Tadhg!”
Stabbing pain sliced my side. I glanced down to see the flash of a blade as the lanky man I thought I’d killed tore his dagger from my gut. The gushing wound burned like the fires of hell. “Feckin’ hell . . .” An iron blade. Like the feckin’ soldiers used.
The man glanced at the dagger in his hand, then back at me, regret flashing in his brown eyes. I held out a trembling hand, wrapping a noose of magic right above the man’s bobbing Adam’s apple, tightening the cord until his face matched the blood on my hands. Relishing the way he fought as I lifted him clean off the ground, dangling like a worm on a string.
The spells I’d learned from my mother came flooding back as I spoke to the earth, calling for it to open. The price I’d have to pay would be worth it. The ground quaked, a beast waking from its long slumber, before cleaving in two, consuming bodies and bloody limbs. The man who’d stabbed me opened his mouth, to cry for mercy, no doubt.
Where was Padraig’s mercy? And Keelynn’s?
My side burned like the fires of hell. Where was mine?
I opened my hand, dropping him into his shallow grave, reveling in the sound of the earth claiming his life and mending itself, until all that remained of the altercation was the bloody grass and a slight mound running from the trees to the road.
“Keelynn?” Where had she—Dammit. “Keelynn!”
She’d collapsed onto the stones, heaving and retching. My feet felt like leaden weights as I stumbled toward her. Death was coming for me. I had to be quick. But my feckin’ feet refused to go any faster. Eventually, I fell next to where she trembled. The moment my hand connected with her shoulder, she flew back.
“It’s only me. It’s only me.” What was I saying?Iwas the one she feared. In a final act of foolishness, I shifted a flask of water. “Here.”
She took it from me with shaking hands, cleaning her mouth and spitting in the grass. “It’s just water.”
“Would you rather something stronger?” She’d have to wait until I came back because I couldn’t feel my legs or my torso as death’s icy hand stretched toward my heart.
Thankfully, she shook her head. “You killed them.Allof them.”
What’d she think I’d do? Leave them go after they’d killed Padraig and threatened us both? “I told you to look away.”
“I-I couldn’t.”
The forest swam in my eyes, dark spots gathering at the edge of my vision. The last thing I heard was Keelynn calling my name.
14
No matterhow many times I’d died, the searing pain of coming back never eased. This time had been the same as every other: the burning, the panic of knowing there was no escape, that I had no choice but to lie there and endure every excruciating second.
But the strange sensation of someone pulling and dragging at me. Lifting my shirt. Pressing a cold hand to my stomach. That was all new.
My eyes flew open.
Keelynn hovered over me, my head on her thighs as she studied my abdomen with a furrowed brow, poking and prodding with frigid fingers.
“Anything else you want to check while you’re down there?” I croaked.