“Everett?” she cried out.
“Verity!” There was no denying it, hoarse as his voice was. It was indeed Everett. “Stay where you are. I’m coming for you.”
“Everett.” She coughed and sputtered.
“Lady Vitty?” Emma asked, her eyes wide and fearful.
“Keep holding on to me, dear,” she managed. “My brother has come to help us.”
Emma clung tighter. The house howled and groaned, and flames began licking up the walls behind them.
A shadowy figure approached then, coughing, moving slowly. But beloved and most welcome.
“Verity!”
He was there, before them. Dirty, covered in soot. But there.
“Everett,” she choked out.
“Take my hand,” he ordered. “Don’t let go. The smoke is thicker below. It’s difficult to see. We have to move quickly. The building is unstable.”
She seized her brother’s hand and wasted no time in following him, moving with as much haste as possible. The heat was almost unbearable, and the lower they went, the worse it became. Poor Emma began crying again, her face buried in Verity’s neck. For the child’s sake, she struggled on.
They made it to the main hall when a burning rafter gave way, falling across their path and blocking it. Smoke billowed, choking her, a blast of heat searing her skin. She stumbled, tripping over her hems, panic seizing her as she stumbled and lost her hold on her brother’s hand.
This was how it ended, she thought.
This was how she would die, here in the Children’s Foundling Hospital as it burned to ash.
It was her last thought before a sharp pain suddenly radiated from the back of her head and she pitched forward into a black abyss of nothingness.
Verity’s handslipped from his.
Coughing, doing his utmost to keep from taking in too much smoke, he turned back, eyes burning, lungs on fire. Through the darkness, he could barely discern his sister’s silhouette, the small child hanging from her. She tripped, propelling forward, and in the next instant, a burning piece of the rafters fell, striking her.
She cried out and fell forward, slumping motionlessly.
“Verity!” he hollered, terror gripping him.
Dear God, had the beam hit her in the head? Was she dead?
He rushed toward her as new flames lit feet away from her slouched form. The child was screaming and crying. Verity was frighteningly still. Somehow, she had twisted as she fell to protect the girl from the brunt of the fall. His sister was on her back, the child scrambling, grasping her soot-stained bodice.
“Lady Vitty! Lady Vitty! Don’t die!”
“Come here, child,” he ordered the frantic girl, needing to move both her and his sister out of the burning orphanage before it was too late.
He opened his arms to the child. The girl was clutching a blanket, the corner of which had caught flame. Everett stomped on it to put it out and then scooped her into his arms.
“Riverdale!”
By some miracle, Kingham appeared at his side in the smoke.
“Where is Verity?” King demanded.
“There.” Everett coughed, blinking against a hot wind that brought a rush of smoke to them as he pointed to the floor where his sister lay, still immobile. “A beam struck her. She’s unconscious.”
“You take the girl, and I’ll take her,” King said.
