A mottled ray of moonlight catches on the distinctive metal lines of a gun, aimed right toward us.
But this only panics Laura, hands flying in a frenzy.
“She has a knife, Ophelia.”
“Don’t. Shoot,” I beg her, trying to catch one of Laura’s arms. The knife settles at my neck, my hand on her wrist preventing it sinking into my skin. “Laura, listen to me.”
“Listen to you? Listening to you was my final hope.”
“I am so,sosorry.”
And I am. Sorry doesn’t cover it. The guilt makes my breaths labored, turns my blood to ice.
Laura is me, and I am Laura. Two women let down by the same man. Two women united by the same trauma. Two women forgotten by the law.
And then I forgot her, too.
I wrap my other hand around the blade, and it bites my palm as I carefully push it away from my neck. Blood trickles onto my clothes. “I’ll get you some help. I’ll help you.”
“You made mebelieve. But you’re just like the rest of them.”
“I’m so sorry. I never intended to fall in love,” I plead, desperate for both of us to make it out of here alive. It doesn’t take much effort to push her upright and away from me, for me to see from her outline just how skeletal she really is.
I did this.
I am no better than the people I swear to destroy.
Her breathing calms just a fraction. My thumb strokes small circles on her knuckles where I hold both of her hands in mine. “That’s it,” I whisper, like I’m taming a wild animal. “Breathe. I’ll help you. I’msosorry.”
She backs off me, and for a second, I think it’s working.
But then she makes the fatal mistake.
She lunges toward Belladonna.
“Don’t!” I shout, but I’ve always admired Belladonna for her ability to put herself first. One single gunshot slices through the dense air, ruthless and efficient.
It casts the forest in an orange glow for the briefest of seconds, and then Laura crumples to the ground in a heap of stained clothes and gangly limbs.
“No,” I croak, crawling over to her. Even in the dark, with a moving target, the shot couldn’t have been more accurate. I press my hands over the blood that pumps out of the wound just above her heart, like that’ll fix anything, like I didn’t kill Laura five months ago when I chose love over revenge.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.Oh God, I’m so, so sorry.
The whites of her eyes seem to glow in the dark, wide with shock. Her blood is a crimson river that trickles into the earth, and if she’d been offered the scholarship, if she’d met someone she loved, if our roles were reversed, it’d be mine.
“I don’t want to go to prison,” she whispers, like she believes she might survive this.
I clutch her body to mine, my hand a steady support beneath her head. “You won’t. I won’t let that happen.”
“Promise?”
“I promise,” I say, holding her emaciated hand in mine. Something splinters inside my chest. “Belladonna is really good at hiding evidence.”
“Yeah?”
I brush the hair from her face, a tear trickling down my upper lip and bursting on my tongue. “Yeah.”
She dies quickly. Quicker than Bancroft. She dies with her hand in mine and my hoodie draped over her shivering frame.
