But I don’t think I can.
The past few hours have been the most terrifying of my life.
I can’t lose her.
“We need to get out of here. Echo’s powers don’t work down here, so we need to make it up the stairs so we can get far away and never come back,” Cam says.
“Soren.” Echo’s voice is quiet and cracks slightly as she says his name. “He was already out of it and then he got knocked out again, I don’t…’
“He’s unconscious but his breathing is fine,” Leif says as he crouches next to him.
I glance over at Cam who is slumped on the floor beside me; she looks in far better shape than Wren but is clearly exhausted.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine,” she replies drily. “Fucker hadn’t made it to start draining me yet. He took ‘just a sip’ of power from each of us before he strung us up.”
I nod, recognizing that I need to be the one to take charge here and get us upstairs so we can get the fuck out of here. “Leif, you get Soren upstairs. I’ll take Wren,” I say. It feels weird to be the one shooting off orders since I’m always the right-hand man, the loyal second in command.
“There’s a medical wing back at the academy. We should go there so they can help Wren,” Leif says. “What do we do withhim?”
I glance over at the still unconscious form of Andrew, confirm he is still breathing and shrug. I really couldn’t give a shit what happens to him. “Doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere. What happened to the witch?”
Finn shrugs right back. “Dealt with her.”
Okaaay. That could mean anything from, ‘she’s knocked out too’, to ‘I burnt her to a crisp and left her on the sidewalk’.
“I’ll contact Madame and they can send someone through to pick the two of them up. This is way out of all of our pay grades,” Leif says.
“Not that any of you get paid,” Jet says from behind us, her eyes sweeping over the scene in front of her. When they reach Echo, she rushes forward, only stopping once Finn growls at her, using his body as a shield. Even when Echo tugs on his arm, he just sticks his nose into her hair and huffs. The message is clear, nope, he’s not letting her go.
I don’t blame you, buddy.
Ugh, I push that pathetic thought down as we tromp up the stairs into the living room which is now even more open plan, considering that Finn destroyed the window.
“Okay everybody gather and hold hands,” Echo says, her tone bright and I get a sudden sense of how she must be when she’s acting as a tour guide. No wonder their tours were so popular, the woman is like a dose of pure sunshine in your life.
I grab Soren, propping him up with my arm around his back with Leif on his other side. I also have Wren held firmly in my other arm. Neither are steady on their feet and both keep drifting in and out of consciousness, but luckily, it doesn’t take us long to get back to the medical wing of the academy.
Things are then a rush of movement as our injured party members are swept up and taken off to be cleaned up and seen to, while Finn and I are given something to cover ourselves up with.
Echo is the first to be released. She’s got pretty bad bruising all over from where she apparently fell down the stairs and raw skin at her wrists from being strung up. Soren is fine too, despite a monster headache, and we have to keep an eye on him for the next 24 hours.
Echo is then taken away to have a meeting with Madame while I sit with Jet, Finn and Soren, waiting. The atmosphere is tense. None of us want to be anywhere we can’t see her right now. I can’t seem to stop pacing back and forth and Finn is glaring murderously at the door like it personally offended him by blocking his view of Echo.
What deal is she going to make in there? Now that Wren is back, Echo can ask anything she likes. She could ask for her freedom. She could ask for a whole new life if she wanted.
She could step out of this door and it might be the last time I ever see her. But that’s ridiculous, right? She was happy in the garden; she was happy delivering souls, she could be happy with us.
Still, my hands sweat and I can’t sit still.
Maybe I should have stopped her before she went in there. I should have given her a heartfelt speech about how much she means to me, how our lives are so much better with her in them. How I’ve watched Finn relax his obsession over the gate and apply his attention elsewhere—granted, he’s still obsessive, but somehow it seems healthier when it’s focused in more than one direction. Soren’s opened up too. He’s still not exactly Mr. Sharing Caring, but he’s trying. He cares. And for someone that’s never experienced anything like love before, that’s a big deal for him.
I can see my future with her. It’s filled with laughter and smiles. We could be a family.
I think all four of us have been pretty lonely in our lives, but we don’t have to be. Not anymore.
I’m about to go out of my mind, teeth grinding, fists clenched so hard my fingers ache, when finally she reappears.
