Curling into him, I sobbed, the force of it shaking his body against my own. I gasped for air, nose pressed into the creases of his shirt, needing to breathe him in one last time. The usual crisp linen scent was flooded out by the metallic stench of blood.
Lynx slowly removed his crimson-coated hands off of Atlas, placing one on my spine, stroking up and down in slow, gentle movements.
“Oakley,” he whispered, attempting to pull me up toward him. “We need to get you safely back to Aspen.”
“I-I can’t.” I clutched Atlas’s shirt tighter, splotching it with my tears.
A feminine hand slipped over his chest, and I jerked upright. Aurora knelt next to us in her hideous puke-green jumpsuit.
“Don’t touch him!” I grabbed her wrist, pushing her away from us.
She stood her ground, sliding her hand back to his heart and nudging me out of the way. “Do you want a chance to save him or not?”
“What are you doing?” I asked, watching her hands hover atop Atlas’s chest. She nodded to Lynx. “Put pressure in the wound again.”
Light pulsed under her palms until sweat beaded her brow.
“Incarnation,” she whispered. The answer to a question I’d had since I met the bitchy coveness.
Her gift.
“You can bring people back to life?” I asked, hoping this was true. That maybe Hazel had seen something I refused to—some good in her.
“Not people.” She lifted her hands, and Atlas’s chest rose up to touch her palms. His stare was still vacant but a bit less glassy. “Inanimate objects.”
“So you can’t bring him back?”Then what was the point of getting his heart to beat again?
“His body should hold on a little longer at least. You won’t have much time.”
I lowered my gaze, noticing the slight rise and fall of his chest, his breathing shallow and abnormally slow. He was no longer dead, but no longer alive either. It was something in between but it was still something.
“How much longer?” Saros asked, brows knit tightly. I didn’t see Aleander’s body in the stairway anymore.
“Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.”
My eyes met hers, trying to understand, wanting to know how I could use this to save him. “What happens then?”
“He’ll die.” She said it so detached and with such a look on her face that I got the impression she’d tried this before.
“Did you do this to Acacia?” I asked.
She nodded. “I knew I couldn’t bring her back for good, but I’d hoped it would be enough for her to tell us how to get Hazel out.” She swept her hands over Atlas’s nearly still body. “As you can see, she wasn’t able to say.”
Saros started down another flight of stairs, the sound of his footsteps grabbing my attention. “Where are you going?”
“To make a phone call.” His face was all seriousness. I knew better than to ask more.
There was more commotion above us. Someone would eventually come here looking. I had no idea how Aurora had gotten out of The Casket, but I didn’t really care right now. I just needed her magic to work. To give us some time.
“We need to get him somewhere safe,” I said to no one in particular, not sure where we would be able to take him.
Lynx lifted him over his shoulder, then started toward the stairs that Saros had gone down. “I’ve got a way.”
Chapter25
Oakley
Lynx guided us to a large portrait of Atlas’s grandfather, the founder of the Council of Magical Welfare. His emerald eyes and confident smirk glinted back at us, and I didn’t know whether to take it as a blessing or an omen that we had to cross his threshold to save his grandson from a hex he’d brought upon their family.
