My eyes slam shut, and my roots stab up against the skin of my neck. They wrap around my veins like furious snakes, constricting and biting, making me hurt all over, but it doesn’t matter.
Because I killed her. I fuckingkilledher—
Her lips suddenly part. The movement makes my eyes snap open just as a shuddering breath lurches out of her. Wisps of black expel from her mouth, the poisoned air evaporating between us.
Relief pounds through my temples. “Auren?”
But her eyes don’t open, and dread pulls at my chest.
I close my eyes to focus on the inside of her again, and immediately, the blood drains from my face. Because that piece—that single scrap of rot that I should’ve just ripped out of her when I got knocked on my ass—is still there.
It’s still. Fucking. There.
Stunned, I mentally try to grip around it again and yank, again and again, but it won’t budge. It won’t leave.
She breathes, another exhale of murky black misting past her lips.
My heart pounds like fists against my ribs, ready to punch through and fight. And still, no matter how much I call to my power, that piece in her chest won’t come out. It’s sunken in, like a stain of ink in gold fabric that I can’t get out.
Yet her chest is rising and falling. Her heart has begun to beat. She’salive.
I can’t get that fucking last drop of rot out of her, but she’s alive, and that’s what matters.
“Wake up, Auren.”
Seconds go by. Five, ten, twenty. I count them all.
“Is she okay?”
My back tenses at the rough question spoken from Digby, his voice hostage to both injury and disuse. I don’t answer him, and I don’t know if anyone else attempts to. I keep watching her. Willing her to open her eyes.
“Come on, Goldfinch…” I murmur, urgency notched around my neck like a noose.
There’s the sound of shuffling footsteps, then Digby is pushing his way forward to kneel next to me. “Is she okay?” he demands again.
When I still don’t answer, his hand grabs the front of my shirt, and he tugs me to face him with surprising strength, considering the bruised state of him. “What did you do?” he snarls through swollen lips split with blood and frost.
Osrik is there in an instant, lifting Digby and pulling him away. “What did you do?” Digby’s shout is mangled, hoarse with accusation, but it melds with the voice of my own inner terror. The two of them exchange some heated words, but fear is too busy slamming in my ears for me to hear what they say.
What did I do?
The panic and fear that’s been latched to me since the moment I used my power on her comes flaring up in the form of a tremor through my hands.
“Why isn’t she waking up?” Lu asks beside me, but I don’t know. I don’t fuckingknow, so I can’t say a damn thing.
I clasp her cold cheeks in my hands, hissing at the pain throbbing in my fingers. Even now, it’s as if my power wants to split from my skin and go back to her.
Her aura is dull. Just wisps of dreary gold barely skimming against her silhouette. It should be gleaming brightly despite the night, yet it’s nothing like the flare of potent power and life that usually shines from her.
I waited too long.
I should’ve rotted her sooner, before she’d nearly drained herself. I should’ve landed faster, ripped my magic out of her earlier.
“Don’t do this,” I grit out. To her, to the gods.
Not now.
Not after everything. Not when I just fucking got her.
