Page 173 of A Courage of the Chosen

He’s remarkably calm. Has been since we told him that Elsie slipped into some kind of coma not long ago.

He looks me in the eyes, and that haunted, pained grief flickers in their pale-blue depths. “You’d know if she was gone.”

Yeah, I would. The fact I’m still intact, and she’s still breathing, is the only reason I haven’t completely lost my shit.

Our connection has gone dark, though, and there’s nothing at the other end when I throw myself down the bridge into her mind. Her soul is still nestled in my chest, where my magic has spiraled around that little piece of her.

I observe him. “Did you know? That she had Dorche powers?”

Paul’s mouth pops open. “No?”

I lean forward, bracing my forearms on my knees in the chair opposite him. “You knew her father was Dorche. But you didn’t know she has shadow magic?” I let some of the disbelief drip into my tone.

“No, Callahan. I didn’t know she had any power at all until Màiri’s death. Even then I didn’t know the extent of it. She grows stronger every day.”

I breathe in harshly, making it look like a scoff, when really I’m assessing his scent to see if he’s lying to me. I only drag in the hint of peppermint that follows him and Finneus, and lean back into my chair with my hands folded across my stomach.

“She was trying to save Rachel,” I tell him. My mother had explained what occurred on the road back from Ruival when she moved into the palace. He’s one of the few who know the truth. “That’s how it happened. She used her shadow magic and fused it with my sister’s, then drew it in to herself. I could sense it, the cold taking over her. I did nothing to stop it.”

When Tavish confronted me in Elsie’s mind last night, and asked me what I did, it gutted to me to give him that truth. I stood by and let my wife, my soul-bonded, push herself too far. She took too much and is now paying the price.

And not just her either. Rachel has followed Elsie into whatever state she’s fallen into. We moved her into the living area just beyond the door of our bedroom, so that it would be easier for Lorna to observe them both.

The healer confirmed there was no Dorche magic left in Rachel’s body, and she also confirmed she couldn’t feel a damn thing from Elsie other than the slow thudding of her heart. It’s barely keeping her alive right now, and Lorna has administered a few different potions to increase Elsie’s blood pressure. They work for a time, but whatever is happening to her is beyond Lorna’s capabilities.

Elsie is dangerously close to drifting into the afterlife.

Despite how near she’s dancing with death, this brilliant, beautiful woman has done it. She’s saved my sister and her best friend. In doing so, she’s somehow tied their life forces together unknowingly. Now, whatever becomes of Elsie will happen to Rachel. Lorna felt something bridging the two of them.

If Elsie wakes up, so will she.

If Elsie doesn’t . . .

“She’s so much like her grandmother,” Paul jars me from the very real possibility that I might lose them both. “Headstrong. Determined. And Dhia do they have a temper on them when they get going.” He scoffs at his own joke, but a smile is the furthest thing from my mouth, which is set in grim line.

“But they’re also selfless.”

I think on all the sacrifices Elsie has made for the good of others, and what she’s had to endure as a result of those decisions. “I can’t deny that.”

“So believe me when I tell you, even if you’d tried to stop her, Elsie wouldn’t have listened. She’d have done it anyway.”

I open my mouth to argue, but quickly close it again because Elsie has told me as much. When she returned to me after breaking herself out of Tavish’s captivity, she told me she’d do it again a thousand times over to save someone she loves.

Here lies the proof, in the form of an unconscious queen. Pale, cold, and a gray that’s synonymous with death. A color that’s followed me for much longer than ought to be fair for one person to endure.

“Anything?” Brodie peers his head around the door.

He was so close to having Rachel returned to him. It’s cruel really, the way she uttered his name and was then snatched away from him.

I shake my head, and his shoulders curve inward. “They’ll be okay, Brother. She’s come back to me once, she’ll do it again. And Elsie isn’t done with you yet either.”

They’re both too calm while I’m barely holding it together. I fucking hate sitting here waiting for something to happen, good or otherwise. There’s nothing I can do to influence the outcome, and that makes my leg bounce and my fisted knuckles turn ashen.

Pushing up from my chair, I stride past Brodie, unable to adopt the same level of optimism as him, and needing to expel some of the disquiet.

Life hasn’t been kind to either of us, and in the face of it, we’ve both travelled down very different paths. His outlook has always been more positive than mine, and I don’t have it in me to bring him down to my level.

She’s there. Right there. You can feel her. I tell myself the same facts on repeat.