Wherever we are is home, I think to the roses, even as tears sting my eyes.I’ll protect you.
Mom squeezes my shoulder as I carefully bundle the roses in the fabric and clutch them to my chest.
I rise to my feet. “Okay, let’s go?—”
It happens so fast. The blink of an eye, the beat of a heart.
There’s a chittering sound, familiar from the Briar.
A goblin appears in the window, standing in the pane, heedless of the shards of glass. He raises a bow, his arrow trained on Wrenley.
She’s facing the door. She doesn’t see. I scream her name.
It’s too late. By the time she turns, the arrow’s flying through the air.
But Papa’s not too late. He leaps, throwing his entire body in front of hers.
The arrow makes a squelching sound as it pierces his chest, and in that blink of an eye, that beat of a heart, I am drenched in my father’s blood.
84
Rosalina
What do you tell someone when you only have one momentleft with them?
Do you try to recall your happiest memories, spinning images into words of a life well-lived?
Do you take the last opportunity to curse them out for all the pain they wrought upon you? To remind them of all the ways they hurt you?
Do you lament the lack of a future together? Cast your wishes into their well so they might carry them, wherever they’re going?
Or do you simply tell them the truth:I loved you. I love you. And I always will.
These are the questions that assail my thoughts as I fling myself down to the side of my father.
The arrow juts out of his heart. Brilliant red blood sputters from his mouth and paints the front of his white shirt. For the first time in my life, my father looks afraid.
I wish I could burn the image from my mind.
A strangled roar tears out of my mother’s throat as she charges the window, shoving the goblin with all her might. He tumbles backward with a screech.
Then she’s next to me screaming. Screaming like a woman undone from the inside out. Wrenley’s collapsed on his other side, shaking him and wailing over and over: “Why did you do that? Why did you do that?”
I want to cover my ears and shut my eyes and curl up in a ball, but I can’t.
Because my father is dying, and I have one moment left.
I grab Papa’s hand, but it’s too limp to squeeze mine back. His gaze is faraway, out the window. It’s almost like he’s searching the sky.
My useless body is completely devoid of magic. There’s not even an inkling of healing energy left within me. So what do I do?What do I do?
This…wasn’t supposed to happen. My mother bargained away our freedom to make sure time would never claim him. To learn how to bind his life to something eternal. But there’s no way to bargain with the crack in his ribs, with the blood gushing from his heart.
There are more things I need to say to my father than there are stars in the sky. Hurts I want to scream, apologies I want to utter, and memories I’m desperate to make. It’s as if I can see them sputtering out around me, like candles in a rainstorm.
Papa gives a gasp, and he squeezes my hand once, tight.
There’s no coming back from this. I know it not because of the slowing of his heart but because the world tilts and nothing feels safe anymore.
