My voice is already raw, but I scream her name anyway. The family who was around her are too busy for celebrating to hear my shouts, the whole area is loud I don’t think anyone can hear me.
“Aoife!”
I lunge forward, but I’m too late.
A hand clamps over her arm , one of her uncles, I think. Maybe Rory. She doesn’t fight, not because she wants to go, but because she’s stunned. Because she didn’t expect them to move. Because none of us did.
We never thought they would do anything here, too many eyes on her, but we were fucking wrong.
I push through bodies, elbowing past my own blood, but by the time I hit the steps, she’s gone.
Gone like mist, swallowed into a tide of O’Briens in dark suits and colder eyes.
Silence hits harder than any scream.
I stand there, chest heaving, fists clenched at my sides.
I won the fucking ring. I bled for it. Killed for it. Trained until my ribs cracked and my knuckles split for it.
And I lost her.
“I won the ring. I lost the girl.”
No one hears the words I whisper to the sight of her last look over her shoulder. To the quiet left behind in her place.
But someone will hear me soon.
Because this isn’t over.
This storm isn’t ending. It’s still going.
Chapter 44
Aoife
The air is loud with celebration.
I keep to the edge of the training ground, hidden by the Blackstone’s cold stone walls, I have a few of Matteo’s cousins around me.
My heart beats in rhythm with his name.
He won, and the smile on my face is so big it’s starting to hurt. I want to run to him, feel his skin, kiss his mouth, tell him I’m so proud of him.
But I don’t move.
I wait. I watch him laugh with Marco and Milo, barely standing but still smirking like he owns the night. He’s limping. He’s bruised. And yet he looks like vengeance wearing a crown.
He sees me, and he’s walking over, my body starts to tingle with excitement of having my arms wrapped around him, and hope, pray we can put all this behind us.
And then, a hand covers my mouth.
No sound. No air.
I thrash but arms tighten around me. Familiar arms.
“Shhh,” someone whispers. “Don’t make a scene, Aoife.”
My body’s dragged backward. I can’t scream. I can't breathe. I claw at the hands, but someone else grabs my wrists. Another set of hands, bigger, stronger. My cousin’s.
