“You’re not fully lucid. You have a bone sticking out of your leg.”
I’m lucid enough to know he walled off my heart as soon as it opened up, but that doesn’t hide his actions. “You died for me again.”
Without warning, Eli rips a larger hole in my pants. The movement is decimating, pain wrenching a scream from my throat. Then I’m quiet as he pushes the fabric out of the way, letting his fingers slip through the blood dripping down my leg. His voice calms the agony. “I’ll die as many fake deaths as it takes to keep you alive.”
And I believe him.
“I’m going to set the bone now,” he says, licking his fingers clean.
Even that sight doesn’t ease my surge of panic. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
“No.” He yanks my leg down then forces the bone back into place with an audible grind.
My shriek echoes in my mind. Panting and delirious with pain, I watch him pull one pair of my underwear after another from his pocket. Then tie them together. And finally he wraps them around my leg and tightens them into knots.
“I think you broke it all over again,” I say.
“Eli, hurry! I can’t stop it,” Kaleida shouts from where she kneels, peeking her head over Zandrite’s bed.
“Stop what?” he yells.
“The bleeding,” she cries. “It’s Milo.”
Eli is on his feet in an instant, then pauses, looking down at me with heavy eyes. “You’re hurt too.”
“Go to him,” I urge. But the second he turns his back, I try to follow, only to be stopped by the pain in my leg, excruciating, even with the slight reduction from the roots. “Damn broken bone.” I punch the marble floor then nurse my freshly split knuckles and curse as Kelter leaves his father’s body to come to me.
“I’ll drag you,” he offers.
“You killed your father.” I look up at my friend, my link, trying to sort him out. “I thought you didn’t want him dead.”
“I didn’t know what I wanted.” He tucks an arm under my uninjured side and shuffles backward.
I groan the whole way over to Eli, wrecked by the way my body screams to be fixed. But the closer I get, the more it hurts—in my heart.
Milo’s head rolls back and forth on the wall, his blonde hair bright against the black marble. But it’s not the crater in his stomach that I can’t handle. It’s the continuous moan of defeat rising from his chest. His face is slack, his expression soft, blue eyes wide and full of wonder despite the blood spluttering from his mouth with each grueling breath.
Atom is at his side, bloody and listless, the shock evident with the way he labors to hold up his head. Confusion builds on his face as he looks around. “It’s not too late to stop it,” he slurs. “Not yet.”
I hold his cheek. “Atom, it’s me. It’s okay now.”
“No, it’s just about to start.”
Eli’s hands are fixed over Milo’s stomach in a desperate attempt to keep the blood from flowing. “We need to close him up!”
Kaleida holds her face in panic, smearing dark red over her cheeks. “He didn’t have any more of the tincture at his house.”
“Then anything! Give me something to stop the bleeding!” He grabs Milo’s ripped shirt and stuffs it into the gaping hole in his abdomen.
Milo groans, his usually vibrant eyes shifting to shadowed and weary, the blue now a dull gray.
Kaleida slaps Eli’s hand. “That’s not sanitary!”
I grab his wrist when he tries to cover the wound again. “Eli. Talk to him.”
He could free himself from my grasp, but makes a fist instead, shaking. “Why would I talk instead of saving his life?” He sends a bloody hand through his hair, streaking his curls red.
Kaleida grabs Kelter’s leg to get his attention. “Stop standing here doing nothing. Go extract Zandrite’s essence before his death stone forms and we can’t get it out. I don’t know how long we have.”
