Page 92 of Bone Year

I back away until my spine hits the wall.

The healer keeps cutting. It’s protocol to remove the dead tissue.

About to throw up, I turn and walk out.

The corridor is empty. The lamps flicker. Everything feels far away like I’m watching myself from somewhere outside my body.

She’s dead.

I promised her. I looked her in the eyes and told her she’d fly again, and she believed me.

And I let her die.

No, I killed her.

The saw was in my hand. All I had to do was cut, but I couldn’t.

I froze.

She died because I’m broken. Because I killed my father, and something in me died with him.

The tears come. I don’t try to stop them.

I don’t know where I’m walking. I need to be anywhere else, somewhere I can’t hear that sound. Somewhere I can’t see her face.

I round a corner and shove through the door to one of the empty exam rooms.

I slam into something solid.

Hands catch my arms, steadying me.

I look up through the blur of tears.

It’s Malric.

His amber eyes move over my face, taking in my tears and the blood on my hands. Her blood. Something shifts in his expression, but he doesn’t say anything.

He pulls me into him.

His hand cradles the back of my head, and I cry into his chest—ugly, full bodied sobs that wrack through me like something is trying to claw its way out. My whole body is shaking. I can’t stop it. I can’t control any of this.

I would do anything, give anything, be anything to make this crushing weight disappear for one second.

Malric’s hand runs down the back of my head. Slow. Almost gentle.

But he’s here, and I’m breaking and don’t have the strength to care about anything else.

“Patients die, Red.” His hand keeps moving through my hair. “It’s not your fault. It’s what happens here.”

I shake my head against his chest. He doesn’t understand. It is my fault. The saw was in my hand.

“I can make the pain stop,” he whispers.

I should say no. I should push him away and walk out and find Jace and let him hold me instead. That’s what I should do.

But Jace will ask what happened. He will want to talk. He will look at me with those soft blue eyes, and I’ll have to explain that I let a fourteen year old girl die because I’m too broken to do my job.

Malric won’t ask. He doesn’t care about the details. He is offering me a different kind of pain, and right now that’s the only thing I want.