Rook hugged herself in awe as well as fear. “So...we destroy life when we’re apart but—”
“—together. We seem to give it.”
Our eyes locked.
A shiver ran down my spine.
Rook inhaled deeply and I sensed her falling into grief again. Grief that she’d never been told what they’d done to her. Grief that her own parents were probably the ones who did it.
Wrapping my arms protectively around her, I scanned the moonlit horizon.
Thank God this had happened here and not somewhere public.
Thank God we had no witnesses. No cameras. No drones.
Only we would ever know what we’d done.
And we’d take it to the grave before we told anyone.
Chapter Forty-Seven
“DRINK IT, YOU DUMB BEAST.”
“What have I told you about calling him dumb?” Rook asked, dropping to her haunches beside me where I shoved my bleeding wrist under Whisper’s burned nose.
She looked as if she’d been dragged through a forest backward—which was almost true. After the uncomfortable epiphany by the river, we’d begun the journey back to Ashfall Cliff.
The trail was ridiculously overgrown, and it’d taken us two hours to hike from the bottom of the river back to the estate at the top. It also didn’t help that I was used to walking barefoot but she wasn’t. And she refused to let me carry her, even though she winced and moaned most of the way.
At least everyone was asleep as we’d slipped through the back gate and sneaked through Ashfall Cliff. Whisper had appeared from the shadows as soon as we’d entered my courtyard. I’d raced toward my best friend, taken one look at his weeping burns, and ordered him into the pavilion where all of this nightmare had started.
“It’s a pet name.” I offered up my cut wrist again, rolling my eyes as the panther turned his nose up. “Isn’t it, Whisp?”
Whisper sneezed and hoisted himself to all fours with a wince. His burned pelt and exposed flanks tore at my heart. Watching him limp on scalded paws...I couldn’t do it.
Shooting upright, I blocked his path and shoved out my arm again. “If you don’t take a lick, I’ll force it down your throat.”
He hissed unconvincingly.
“Lick it.”
Plonking his rump down, he sat like a pissed-off gargoyle, his tail lashing in the lamplight.
“Don’t make me ask again,” I growled. “I can’t stomach seeing you in pain so behave and let me fix you.”
He rolled his golden eyes, sniffed my wrist, then licked my strangely gilded blood with his sandpaper tongue.
Rook sucked in a breath as we both watched him—waiting for the flush of healing and impossibility of a miracle.
But...he jerked back with an offended hiss, his singed fur bristled, and he gagged as if I’d fed him acid.
“You’re so dramatic.” I rolled my eyes.
Rook laughed under her breath as the panther went to her, pressing against her as if she’d save him from me. “There, there. He’s only trying to help.” Her hands landed gently on his pelt, careful to miss the burned patches.
Whisper whimpered instead of purred.
A thick droplet of my blood splashed onto the floorboards.
