Her hand lifts to her mouth as her auburn stare grazes Orlaith’s body.
Her face.
“Oh, my girl …”
“Get back,” I roar, and she shifts out of the way.
I charge past, and Mersi’s hurried, shuffled footsteps chase my thundering ones as the door thuds shut, snipping the howling sounds of the storm. Bundled in my arms, Orlaith’s slow, rattling breaths fuel my rage.
My self-disgust.
“She could still overcome this on her own, Rhordyn …”
Mersi’s words are an aching plea but pebbles to my iron shield as I barrel around a corner so fast the flames of a wall sconce flicker. “That chance is dwindling by the hour. I will notgambleher life.”
“The disease peaks at day five. She couldstill survive—”
I spin, forcing Mersi to stop four steps back, her stare running over Orlaith’s disease-ravaged body flopped in my arms like a corpse. “Does shelooklike she’s going to survive?”
My words boom in unison with a slash of lightning that strikes close enough to rattle a nearby window.
Mersi’s features soften as she sighs, a deep sadness in her eyes. “You know, I saw the moment she fell in love with you.”
Her words scour that part of me already raw and bleeding.
Swallowing, I spin on my heel, and charge down the hall again, her footsteps chasing me.
“She was in the garden just over a year ago, planting one of her rose bushes while I helped her mulch the others. Do you remember?”
I snarl, letting the beast inside me loosen some of his rage into the sawing sound tossed behind me as I race around a corner. Down a flight of stairs.
Yes.
“You came storming over while her hands were still dug in the dirt and told her you were holding a small fete. That she needed to see what the world had to offer so she knew what she was missing by hiding behind her Safety Line.”
I turn a corner. Plow down another short flight of stairs. “What’s your fucking point, Mersi?”
“She dodged the statement, as expected. Pretended you didn’t say a thing. Asked if you liked her rose bush. And you told her—”
“I like everything you plant,” I grit out between clenched teeth, remembering the light that kindled in her eyes. The light I ignored.
Chastised myself for.
“You planted a spark in her, then left it to simmer until she was so sick with unrequited love that she accepted the cupla of another male. You’ve been nothing butdevoidto that girl, Rhordyn. And now she’s dying of a sickness that could have been prevented had you only beenhonestwith her.”
Her words are arrows—the iron type that burns going through skin and muscle and leaves me weak at the knees.
She’s right, of course. A shame I’ll wear for the rest of my life.
In working so hard to avoid this very situation, I drove it into existence.
“And though it pains my heart to say it … I must. If you’re doingthisout of duty or self-service, let herrest,Rhordyn.”
My heart stills in unison with my feet, the sconce beside me wavering.
Slowly, I turn.
Mersi stops several feet away, the flashing storm outside igniting her twisted face stained with tears.
