I was still ten yards away when Hyacinth crumbled.
His legs folded beneath him—first the front, joints buckling like they’d been cut, then the back following in slow motion. He went down in a heap of red blood and wrong, wrong,wrong. The sound he made wasn’t a scream anymore; it was a long, low, guttural moan, a soft noise for the broken and the dying.
No, god no, please.
His moan turned wet and gurgling. The sound of lungs filling with blood, of a body shutting down system by system, of consciousness fading like light through closing shutters.
“No, no, please,” I managed through sobs.
Tears blurred my vision, turned the world into watercolor streaks of darkness and brown and red. So much red. The grass beneath him was already saturated, crimson spreading outward in a pool that caught the distant stable lights and turned them rust-colored.
My boots slipped in mud and blood as I got nearer. Each step splashed, sent droplets flying. The smell was overwhelming now—copper thick enough to taste on the back of my tongue, sweet and metallic and nauseating.
I crashed to my knees beside him, hands reaching for his neck, his head, searching for some way to help, to fix, tostop this. His coat was soaked—blood and rain and the cold sweat of shock making him slippery beneath my fingers. Warm. Still warm. Still alive even though he shouldn’t be, even though the amount of blood spreading beneath him said his heart was still pumping even as his body was failing.
His eyes found mine. Brown and liquid and beautiful, framed by lashes that were matted with blood now. But the light was already fading at the edges, awareness dimming like someone was slowly turning down a dial.
He knew me. Still recognized me despite the pain, despite everything. His ear flicked towards my voice, the small movement taking effort that cost him.
“Please, baby, pleasedon’t—”
My hands found the wound. Four parallel gashes torn through his flank, each one deep enough that I could see the layers—skin, fat, muscle, and oh god—
His bowels hung out.
Intestines grey-pink and glistening, spilling from the cavity in his belly where the wolf’s claws had ripped him open. They steamed in the cold night air, still warm, still technically alive even as the rest of him was dying. The membranes were intricate and complex, and never meant to see air.
Blood pulsed from torn arteries with each weakening heartbeat. Not spraying anymore—the pressure wasn’t high enough—just welling up and spilling over, adding to the pool beneath him.
I sobbed. Deep, shuddering, wracking sobs. The sound tore out of my chest, grief and horror and helplessness all woven together into an atavistic animal noise I didn’t recognize as coming from me. It sounded raw and primal.
Footsteps behind me. Running steps splashing through blood and mud. Rowan’s voice was sharp with shock and grief that matched my own. “Violet! Are you hurt?”
He dropped beside me, his hands immediately moving to Hyacinth’s belly, trying to hold—to what? Put the organs back? Stop the blood? Keep his intestines from spilling further onto the saturated grass?
There was too much. Too much damage. Too much red soaking into the earth and running over our hands and seeping into our clothes as we tried uselessly to stem the tide, to hold back the inevitable with nothing but desperation and willpower.
Hyacinth made another sound—softer, wetter, gurgling. His breathing became labored, each inhale a titanic struggle. His sides heaved, ribs standing out in sharp relief beneath blood-soaked hide. Foam flecked his muzzle—pink-tinged, blood-mixed—and his tongue lolled slightly, going pale at the edges.
I stroked his neck, his mane, and felt his pulse against my palm growing weaker with each beat.Thump. . . thump. . . thump. . .Each one fainter than the last, the rhythm stuttering, failing.
“Please, baby,” I choked, “please don’t leave me.”
His eyes were still on mine. Still aware. Stillthereenough to recognize me, to know that I was here, that he wasn’t dying in this cold field alone. His breathing slowed, his pained moans of suffering quieted, and a silence—silent save my hysterical sobbing—began to settle over us.
Then Rowan’s shout shattered that gathering silence. “Damien!” His voice cracked on the name, desperate and furious. His hands were still pressed to Hyacinth’s belly, fingers slick with blood. “Demon!”He screamed it louder, rage tearing his throat. “I will sign your contract! I will visit your damned Strega! I will get you into The Library!But save this damned horse!”
Hyacinth’s breathing changed. Became shallower, more ragged. His pulse beneath my palm was barely there now—just a faint flutter, inconsistent, failing.
No no no no—
“Damien!” Rowan screamed again, louder. “Rip the fucking relic from my chest! Tear it out! Kill me if you have to!Justsave him!”
The offer hung in the cold night air, terrible in its sincerity. Rowan was offering himself. He was willing to die if it meant saving a horse.
This horse. My horse. For me.
Because Rowan understood. He knew that losing Hyacinth would shatter parts of me that would never recover from his loss. He cared enough about me, my health, and my happiness to make that offer.
