Page 68 of The Never Queen

Blood spurts from the wound and from her mouth.

Beside me, Hansel steps into the room. He and his sister lock eyes.

I don’t know when their relationship turned. Or when Hansel decided he was done killing witches, most of all his own flesh and blood.

Gretel frowns and she tries to say something, but no air can make it up her throat so her lips just move, the message swallowed up as she collapses to the stone.

Hansel goes to her, kneels beside her, and gently presses her eyelids closed. I can’t be sure, but I think he whispers a silent prayer about forgiveness and peace.

Darling stumbles over to us.

“Are you all right?” I ask her.

She’s splattered in blood, some of it hers, some of it Gretel’s. Fresh bruises are peppered over her face, and her bottom lip is swollen.

“I’m fine.”

“Why did you run?”

She laughs at me. “This, now? I need a drink first.”

Bash hooks his arm around her shoulders. She winces, he relents.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to hit a sore spot.”

“It’s okay.” She sinks into his hip and he tucks her delicately into his side.

“Just couldn’t spend one night in bed, could you, Winnie Darling?” Vane lights a cigarette with red-stained fingers. The smoke curls up to the low ceiling. “Never do that again.”

Darling rolls her eyes. “You all were talking about me like I wasn’t just down the hall, listening to every word you said.”

“I’m sorry,” Hansel says. He has Merry beside him, her hand threaded with his. “That’s my fault. I should have…” He inhales. “There was a better way to handle that and I’m sorry.”

Winnie faces her father, the man she barely knows and yet, side by side, I can see the similarities. She inherited his nose, and the bow of his lips. The wild, dark brown hair she got from Merry, along with the wide, doe-like eyes.

There was a reason Darling went running from the house. It began with Doren, and the lies she took as truth, that she was not worthy of the fae crown. And when she heard those lies echoed with Hansel and the Order, it only proved what she had come to believe.

I’m not sure where she’ll go from here, but I will make her see her value and her worth if it’s the last thing I do.

I would walk into the sunlight for her.

I would sacrifice it all.

And I think Vane and the twins would do the same.

“Are you okay, Mom?” Darling asks. “You didn’t get hurt, did you?”

“No. I’m fine. I think.” She’s barely looking at us. Or at Hansel. “I’m just glad you all came for me.” Her voice wavers and it registers that she has been taken not once, but twice now in her life. First by me, then by the Witch Killers.

Darling ducks out from beneath Bash’s arm and goes to her mother. She takes her hands in hers and squeezes. “I will never let that happen again. I will protect you, Mom.”

Merry finally looks up. Her eyes are glassy and she swallows back the tears before they spill over. “You promise?”

Darling nods. “I promise.”

Merry collapses against her daughter and sobs.

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