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“He’s gone, Boone.”

Rhys says it carefully, gently even, but the words make everything I’ve been refusing to understand suddenly real.

Whatever has been holding me together gives way.

He pulls me toward him, and this time I go willingly, collapsing against his chest when his arms close around me.

My father is dead.

I bury my face against Rhys and scream.

42

Rhys

It never occurred to me that loss could hit a person this hard. So completely that it destroys the very foundation someone needs to remain upright and leaves them with nothing solid enough to stand on. My father died and there was relief, an enormous weight disappearing from a life he had controlled with cruelty for far too long. My mother’s death left an ache so terrible that twelve years later I still feel her absence in rooms she once occupied. But I didn’t collapse under either of them.

Boone does.

I stand, with him in my arms. He folds against me, grief leaving him incapable of holding himself upright. I tighten both arms around him before his knees can hit the ground, ignoring the pain that tears through my injured arm when his entire weight falls against me. His scream has disappeared, replaced by broken sobs that shake his whole body. His hands clutch fistfuls of my shirt, and every few seconds he tries to turn back toward his father, only to bury his face against me again.

Everything he has tried so desperately to hold on to is gone in the blink of an eye. He endured the winter because of his father. He returned to this village because of him and walked back into Lucien’s reach for him. He even traded away his own freedom because keeping that man alive mattered more to Boone than anything he might have wanted for himself.

And I couldn’t protect him.

I look past Boone toward the body lying motionless in the road, surrounded by blood-soaked cloths and villagers who have finally stopped trying to save a man they know is beyond saving. I put myself between Boone and that pistol because there was never another choice to make, but I never considered the man sitting behind me. I never considered where the bullet would go after it tore through my arm.

The village failed Boone.

I failed him.

I couldn’t protect the one thing he wanted more than anything else in this world. Now he is breaking apart in my arms, and there is absolutely nothing I can do to put him back together.

The villagers watch us cautiously from several feet away, no one daring to approach with Boone clinging to me the way he is. Some are staring at his father. Others are staring at Boone.

Most of them are watching me.

They’re afraid of me.

Good.

Let them be afraid.

Right now, fear is the only thing keeping them far enough away from Boone that I don’t have to make them move.

“Everyone, move. Out of the way.”

A woman’s voice rises over the crowd with enough authority to silence several people at once. Even Boone lifts his head slightly at the sound. Villagers immediately begin stepping aside for her, and she comes through the opening they make without slowing.

She is older, with iron-gray hair twisted into a severe knot at the back of her head and a deeply lined face that looks permanently arranged into an expression of impatience. Her mouth is thin, her eyes sharp and assessing, and the rigid set of her shoulders suggests she has spent most of her life giving instructions and expecting them to be followed the first time.

She stops directly in front of me.

Unlike everyone else, she doesn’t hesitate when she looks at me. She doesn’t flinch from my size or the blood soaking through my sleeve, and she certainly doesn’t seem concerned by whatever stories this village has been telling about me for the last twelve years. Her gaze travels slowly from my boots to my face before one gray eyebrow lifts.

“All grown up, I see.”

I stare at her.