Page 184 of Ashborne: Defiance

“Stop talking like that! Stop it!” Her eyes filled with tears and she clawed at my arms, but I barely felt it as the pain in my chest cracked the mortar around the frozen walls around my heart.

“Grace,” I breathed.

She screwed her eyes closed and shook her head. “Stop!”

“We have to leave, because he won’t be alone. He’s a thief. Or an assassin. He would have stolen, or killed, or… or hurt you.” I couldn’t even get the words out, the horror that filled my head on that last thought.

If I’d broken just a moment sooner.

If I’d fled seconds earlier.

If she’d been there alone in the dark, crying, because I hurt her—

I sucked in a breath as my chest constricted. Grace sobbed, and cried out, fighting as if I were the one trying to kill her. And I knew. I knew because I’d been there. Knew what this would do to her. And knew I couldn’t stop it. I wanted to curse the world, and death, and God.

“Let me go!” she whimpered. And I did. Just for a moment. Just long enough for her to shove me aside and throw herself to the cobblestones, weeping, and grasp at him, shaking him, reaching for that bubbling wound—only to cut herself on the blade and hiss. And sob.

“No, Grace—” But I was too late.

She yanked it out and threw it aside as if it sickened her—because it had. But that only left his feebly pumping heart an open cavern to bleed him out.

Probably a mercy.

She grasped at him, tried to cover the wound.

“Help me! Help him!” she hissed at me. “He’s dying! You have to help!”

Heavy with grief, and sickened with myself because this didn’t sicken me anymore, I knelt behind her, wrapped my arms around her and held her as she cried, and shook him, pleaded with him to wake up.

“He’s gone, Grace,” I whispered in her ear. “He’s gone.”

“No! He can’t… It wasn’t… I only wanted to stop him reaching you!”

“And you did. So well,” I murmured, tipping my forehead against her hair and grimacing, swallowing back the ache in my throat when she thumped on his chest with a closed fist, then again. Demanding that he wake up. Again and again.

She hit him so hard, she panted through her cries, and I feared she’d bruise herself.

I caught her hands, and held them. They were cold.

Shock.

“Voski, let me go!”

I shook my head because I couldn’t speak. Then shook it again, because if I could, I would have taken this away for her.

In that moment, I deeply wished neither of us knew how to disappear in the dark. Or use it. But if one of us had to, I would have taken that for her.

“Voski…” her voice was thin, rasping, barely more than a whisper.

I held on until she slumped. And the cry that broke out of her shattered the first brick of that wall around my heart. With a hiss, I clapped a hand over her mouth, just to muffle the sound, and I whispered everything I knew to soothe her.

You did right.

He was wrong.

Breathe.

I don’t know how long we knelt on that cold, wet stone. Don’t know how many minutes those animalistic cries tore through her. I tried to shush her, but held her through every one. Took the impact of every choking breath that wracked her chest. And rocked her between them.