He charges—pinching the space between us in a few explosive strides.
A bolt of fear slashes through me.
I turn and run, staggering blindly through the sand, colliding with a palm tree. He slams into me, crushing me against the trunk, leaving barely enough space for me to inflate my lungs.
His fist strikes the tree, the creak of splitting wood tightening every muscle in my body. He shoves his head into the side of my neck and huffs sawing breaths upon the bandage Baze bound me in. “You … bared … your … throat …”
His tone is hauntingly calm.
Somehow, that’s much worse.
“I …”
I don’t understand what’s happening. I thought Mala was supposed to be a rich, happy place. All colorful and bright and—
“You looked death in the eye and crooked your finger,” he growls, nudging my head to the side. His lips skim my ear, sending a zap straight down my spine as his hand threads around my chest and presses upon my heart. Like he’s checking for its beat.
A tender shield despite the catastrophic energy lashing against my skin, gusting down my lungs.
His lips graze farther down, over the bind around my throat, the next words spoken through a crackle in his voice as that hand applies more pressure. “You fuckingyielded,Orlaith.”
“You’re dead,” I say, my voice a strangled sob. “I—”
Did terrible, unforgivable things.
He pushes closer, and I feel the deep, catastrophic beat of his life force thumping against my back like the blow of a beautiful, mighty hammer. “Obviously not.”
My soul lurches, my entire being clutching to a single wild thought …
A thread ofhope.
He’s alive. He’s standing right behind me.
The world rips out from beneath my feet so fast my head spins, a relieved sound whittling up my throat that feels stolen.
Not mine.
I don’t understand this reality. Don’t know how to handle it, or why it’s been gifted to me.
I don’t understand.
Alive …
But—
“I got you in the heart …”
“You missed.”
“Impossible.” I know where to strike. Baze taught me well. “I felt it push through!”
“Sorry to disappoint,” he says, the words bitten with such malice I hear the ones hedoesn’tsay. Feel them slice into my chest and slip amidst that messy, mangled forest—a willing victim to those piercing thorns.
For the first time ever, I fuckinghear.
“I …”
Regretted it the moment I did it.
