“Fuck!” I screamed, slamming the letter opener on my desk.
I ran a hand through my hair, leaving a streak of Jude’s blood in my curls, before turning and storming toward the door. I unlocked it and swung it open to see Pax panting, furious and wide-eyed. His gaze dropped to the blood on my hands, then shot up to that in my hair, before trailing to the body behind me and the growing pool behind my desk.
“Is he–” he started.
“Dead,” I nodded.
“I shouted for someone to come help me knock this door down but no one came. I don’t–”
A piercing scream emanated from down the hall and Pax and I exchanged a startled glance before sprinting toward it.
We’ve been betrayed,Isla’s voice entered my mind. The terror in her mental cry had my chest tightening, heart slamming against my ribcage as I ran for her.Hide, Milo. Please hi–
Somethingsnappedinside of me. I nearly doubled over, breath leaving my lungs all at once, but I stumbled on, shoulder slamming into the wall as I ran wildly forward.
Isla?I called into the silence.Isla!
Panic fueled me as I ran faster down the hall toward the residential wing where the scream had come from. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t see anything but the way forward, that blue drenched hallway that seemed to stretch on forever. Something nagged at the back of my mind, something I didn’t want to acknowledge, something that told me I knew exactly who’d screamed.
No, no, no. Isla, please. Answer me! Isla, answer me! Isla!
Pax and I skidded to a stop at the corner, a body in blue visible lying face down in the hall several doors down. I knew him at once.
“Nick,” Pax said softly.
The sound of clanging metal drew our attention and we both looked up to find Cleo fighting an unfamiliar woman in green at the end of the hall. Their blades were locked and Cleo was pushing the Viper back against the wall, away from the door she defended; Nascha’s door. Pax’s gaze swiveled to mine.
“Go,” I ordered and he ran ahead.
I stopped at Nick’s body as Pax went on. I heard a second sword join the fight down the hall but was more focused on the blood pouring out of Nick’s temple and soaking into the rich blue carpet. The door he laid in front of was mine and it was open.
“Isla,” I whispered aloud, breathless, as I turned toward the room Nick had died in front of. “Please.”
But I already knew. I’d known it the moment it happened. The moment her words had cut off, so had our connection. A part of me, a piece of my soul, had been snuffed out in an instant. It felt like dying. It felt like an ending neither one of us were ready for, would ever be ready for, and didn’t deserve. It felt like the loss of all light and laughter and good. Colors weren’t as vibrant as they’d been before, noises were muted and voices muffled, I couldn’t feel the breeze against my skin or the floor beneath my feet. When I turned toward her, my legs buckled and I sank to my knees on the plush carpet of our bedroom floor.
She lay draped across the bed, turned on her side and lying on an outstretched arm. Her dress was pooled around her in a puddle of blue silk and her copper hair coiled in a braid down her back. In her other hand, she clutched the shining hairpin in the shape of a white-feathered bird that had ended her assassin’s life.
I barely even glanced at the boy in green stretched out at the foot of the bed in a puddle of his own blood. I focused only on my wife as I crawled toward her, every muscle in my body shaking, knowing what I would find but too afraid to admit it, clinging onto my denial for every moment I could.
“Isla,” I whispered her name as the first tears began to fall. “Isla, no. Please, no.”
I pulled myself up onto the bed behind her and gathered her into my arms. I shook my head, blonde curls and tears obscuring my vision as I looked down at her cold, pale face and wondered which gods to blame for this, which gods to curse for this cruelty. At the moment, it didn’t matter. Maybe it never truly had.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered to my wife as I stroked her hair, as my tears dripped down to her face and ran down her cheeks in mockery of her own. “I failed. I failed you. I’m so sorry.”
I buried my face in her copper hair and wept, shaking both of us with the force of my sobs. There was a gaping hole in my soul growing bigger, wider, with every passing moment she was no longer here with me. And as I realized I’d never again hear her laugh, see her put her hands on her hip in that way she did when she was mad at me, watch her flip her hair over her shoulder absentmindedly, I raised my gaze to the hair pin and thought about going with her. Maybe if there were gods, there was a place beyond as well. Maybe I could find her again and we could discover divinity together for all eternity. Maybe…
I reached for the pin but someone spoke before my fingers could close around it.
“Geist,” Pax swore.
I didn’t react and didn’t even move when he approached us. Cleo was beside him, covered in blood I wasn’t sure wasn’t hers. Her gaze dropped to Isla and she inhaled sharply.
Clutching my wife, I looked up into Cleo’s eyes and asked. “Nascha?”
Her jaw clenched and the tears I now noticed streaking through the blood on her cheeks answered my question for me.
“I–I was too late,” she said, voice hoarse. “I left her door for only a few minutes, just long enough to grab some dinner downstairs. I never thought…”
