“Why are you hiding.”
“It doesn’t count as a question if your voice doesn’t hitch at the end,” she says, voice rougher than usual. “Meaning I’m not obliged to answer.”
I grind my back molars, still chasing her as she continues to turn, keeping her facejustout of view. Something that feels morbidly poetic.
“Why are youhiding?” I try again, prepared to give it to her in three other languages if she fucking asks for it.
She wobbles, then buckles in unison with my heart. All the breath punches from my lungs as her knee strikes the ground, one emaciated hand slamming down to steady herself, looking like a web of bones splayed across the stone.
My entire body twitches forward—a knee-jerk reaction I couldn’t stifle if I tried—but Ahvi’s hand latching on to mine halts me from lurching past that ring of runes and pulling her into my arms. I hadn’t even seen him move.
“No,” he rushes. “You can’t. The runes might get angry and stretch things they shouldn’t.”
Creators.
Helpless, I watch, trembling with the need to hold her tight.Protecther. An urge that only exacerbates when she, too, begins to shake.
Blood dribbles from somewhere within her hood and splats on the ground, making me feel like a frayed thread. “Raeve, speak to me,” I grind out. “Give mesomething.”
The rugged desperation in my voice bounces off the tunnel’s walls.
“I’m”—cough-cough—“fine. Feel free to”—wheeze—“take a wander and enjoy the sights.”
An icy wind gusts down from above. Carries an eddy of snow that congeals into the shape of a feminine face and long, billowy hair.
The apparition tightens her lips and attacks Raeve with a blast of wind that shears back her hood.
My heart pumps needles deep into my skin as I scour her hollowed cheeks and twiglike neck; so emaciated that even a Shade-borne predator would struggle to find anything to pick at. Blood slicks her cracked lips, her skin so translucent that every vein is a blue, bulging track I can see too well, her sunken eyes bearing none of the crisp color they usuallystrike with. Like a waif sipped and sipped and fucking sipped until only the scraps were left.
She looks at me from between limp strands of black, a desperate, vulnerable ache in her gaze that fucking flays me.
Her fingers curl into the pale hood, yanking. A feeble attempt to tug it forward that offers me a jarring view of her hands—now boasting big, weepy welts. Like frostbite. Or—
Burns.
She tugs the hood again, trying to cover up.
“There’s no point,” I say with my entire chest. “Moonbeam,please. Put your energy intobreathing.”
She opens her mouth to speak, but then her eyes widen and she jerks, folding. Like someone just booted her in the gut. More blood spills from her graying lips and dribbles down her chin.
Splits my heart in two.
She binds her arm around her middle. “That’ll be the”—cough—“stab wound.”
My knees give way, striking stone, gaze dropped to where her hand is fisted into the folds of her cloak, like she’s trying to claw the petals closed on a ruddy flower.
Blood squelches between her fingers, turning her white cloak red and sodden as it seeps and seeps—
Too much.
She’s losing too much.
My thoughts are confirmed when I look at her throat. Watch that thick vein that feeds up just below her ear work its way through slow, uneven beats, each one a heavy stomp to my chest.
I watch with bated breath forthe next … the next … the next …feeling more powerless than I ever have. Helpless tofix this.Caught in one of my soul-destroying slumber-terrors, unable to claw free.
And still …the blood continues to pour.
