Page 2 of Dagger’s Shield

“Magnolia, can you make it out on your own?”

“I think so. You need…there are…they need help.”

“Understood.”

She started to walk away.

“Wait. Givre?”

Her head dropped, and she shook it. “I have no idea.”

The morning sun streamed in from the section where the roof had been, illuminating dust thick enough to taste.

Reaper was marking the positions of the dead for the recovery crews. I kept going deeper, working the area where the gallery had come down. The footing was bad where rubble was stacked three and four feet deep. I climbed over a fallen support beam and found two more bodies. Neither had a pulse.

I was heading farther in when a faint groan stopped me, then a steady tapping, like stone on stone. It was deliberate, as if someone was alive under there.

I tracked the sound to a cracked slab of masonry resting on a broken timber. An arm was extended from beneath it, palm up, fingers half curled. A flash of silver caught my eye. I recognized the signet ring on a woman’s index finger. It was Givre.

Blackjack reached me a second later from the opposite side as I dropped to the rubble and started clearing the stone along the length of her body, working fast but placing each piece where it wouldn’t shift the weight on top of her.

He came at the slab from the other side. The roof had cracked across the middle, with one half resting on a broken timber, and the eight inches of clearance underneath was the only reason she was still breathing. We couldn’t lift the it without risking a shift, so I worked the smaller chunks loose while Blackjack did the same from his side. Each thing we moved changed the load on what was left, and above us the structure was getting louder.

I got the last of the debris off her legs and eased the debris out an inch at a time, and finally, she was clear.

The medics were there with a stretcher before I had my hands off her. They stabilized her neck and got her lifted.

Blackjack stayed when I followed them out.

They had the ambulance doors open and her loaded before I reached the bumper. I climbed in behind her, and when the driver sped out, I put my hand on the rail.

The EMT had cut her jeans away and was working on her thigh. There was ash on her face and blood at her hairline.

I kept my eyes on her chest.

She was breathing.

Then she wasn’t.

2

MAËLLE

ONE MONTH LATER

Istarted down the path from the main camp of Onteora to the banks of Canada Lake. For most, a walk along a lakeshore at an Adirondack Mountain compound would be commonplace. Mundane even. For me, it meant another milestone crossed—I hadn’t used my cane nor had anyone accompanied me.

Being free of both made me feel more like myself than I had in weeks.

I had little recollection of the day I’d come close to dying, first because three explosions had leveled the building I was in, burying me under the debris from the collapsed structure. Then, on the way to emergency care, my heart had stopped.

What I’d been told was that a slab of concrete crushed the muscle of my thigh, causing it to swell, and subsequently stopping my blood flow. After restarting my heart, I’d been taken into surgery, where they were able to release the pressure, stop the swelling, and save my leg. There’d been a lot more to it, but I didn’t retain any of it. I was alive. That was what mattered. Thirteen others who’d been in the building that morning weren’t.

My leg didn’t buckle once as I continued on the path. On the steeper parts, there was some pain, but that wasn’t what made me come to a dead stop.

Ahead of me, sitting on a boulder, looking out at the same lake I’d planned to, was Killian Curran, aka Dagger.

The man was many things to me. He was my savior above all else, given he was one of the two men who’d dug me out from beneath the rubble that would’ve killed me.