“Shit,” he mutters.
Kelter shouts an instant later. “Ever!” Footsteps shake the ground, then he’s crouching over me, panting. “H-how?”
Chapter 7
EVER
You stabbed her?” Sypher asks.
Stabbed?
“No. Now go find the fucker who threw a knife at her before I stabyou,” Eli says. “And take Kaleida. Milo, stand watch.”
Pounding boots disperse. Rain smacks my back.
“We have to get her out of the open before someone else comes,” Kelter says.
I breathe faster. My shoulder blade burns.
“We can’t touch her. Get her onto something we can drag,” Eli says, panicked. “Her heart is all over the place.”
“Drag her? What kind of asshole are you?” Kelter scoops me off the ground and into his arms, somewhat clumsily with his wrists still cuffed.
I groan at the movement.
“How are you doing that?” Eli sputters.
“Maybe it’s only you that she hurts when touched. Take a godsdamn hint.” Kelter adjusts his hold on me.
He can touch me… which means somewhere inside me, the pain I cause Eli is a choice.
“Careful! She’s got a knife in her back,” Eli says.
I what?
“What is the point of your obsession with her if you can’t even keep her safe?” Kelter lectures. “You’re a walking mistake.”
“I know! Fuck. Just get her safe.”
A loose string in my heart twists at his words, at how he views himself underneath the show of confidence. I twist in Kelter’s grasp to look at him.
“We’re under attack!” Milo yells.
Kelter scoffs. “You think?”
Milo rushes up to us. “There’s more of them!”
“Shit.” Eli grimaces, as if he felt the blade in his own back. He tosses his pack to Milo. “Kelter, put her down and get your bitch ass out of here. Milo, fix her and don’t fuck up. I’ll be back. Kaleida never takes a life, and that asshole is dead.”
Don’t go.I almost let the words escape as he runs off. But why would I care? A guard in a black jumpsuit tries to take him down, earning a knife through his heart a second later. Three more guards surround and tackle him.
Milo points frantically. “Put her down behind those trees. Hurry!”
The last I see of Eli is his feet sticking out from underneath the guards as I’m carried away. Kelter drops me facedown on the ground and pulls my cuffed hands out in front of me, stretching my arms flat over the wet dirt. I moan in pain and turn my head to the side, resting my cheek on the cold ground. “Eli?”
“He’ll be okay,” Milo assures me.
“Uncuff me,” Kelt says, followed by the clatter of metal. “And keep your hands off her.”
