For one useless heartbeat my mind rejects the image. Refuses to arrange the pieces into meaning.
Then I see the necklace.
The moth at her throat.
Silver, delicate, sitting there like a small private omen, a little winged thing she wears close to her pulse. Now it is drenched red. Blood gathered in the grooves of the metal, blood shiningacross the spread wings, blood slipping down the chain onto her skin. That tiny familiar shape, something I have kissed, touched, watched catch light against her throat all night, looks like it was dragged out of a wound.
The sight goes through me harder than any knife could.
“Octavia.”
My voice breaks on the first syllable.
Her eyes lift to mine, soft and unfocused.
“I love you,” she whispers.
No drama in it. No fear. No goodbye. Just truth, placed gently into the air between us like she is handing me the last clean thing in the room.
Wobbling, her knees give out, my hands barely catching her.
Her whole body collapses into my arms with a sudden, terrifying weight, all the small hidden effort it took her to keep standing disappearing at once. I go down with her, knife forgotten, dead man forgotten, everything forgotten except the hot flood of blood pouring over my hand when I catch her side.
“No. No, no, no, baby, stay with me.”
The words come apart in my mouth. I can’t hear myself properly. I can’t feel my legs. Her head falls against my chest, lashes fluttering once, twice. Her skin is too cool already, her mouth parting like she might say something else, but nothing comes.
Clamping my hand over the wound, I press, blood forcing its way between my fingers anyway.
The hotel phone is on the nightstand.
I have to lean, drag, nearly tear the cord free to get it. The receiver almost slips from my hand because everything is wet. My palm, her blood, my blood, the Handler’s blood, all of it slicking the plastic as I shove it against my ear.
Someone answers.
A woman’s voice.
It reaches me from another universe entirely.
Giving her the motel name from a cocktail napkin, I think I say there’s been a stabbing. I think I tell her to hurry. Maybe the words are right. Maybe they are just sounds shoved through a throat that has forgotten how to work.
Because none of it stays in my head.
All I can see is Octavia.
Her face has gone pale in a way that terrifies me more than screaming ever could. Her moth necklace rests crooked at her throat, red from chain to wingtip. Blood keeps sliding out from under my hand no matter how hard I press. Her eyelashes tremble, her eyes trying to close.
“Stay with me,” I beg, bending over her so far my forehead almost hits hers. “Baby, stay awake. Look at me. Look at me, come on. You don’t get to do this. You do not get to bring me back just to leave. Do you hear me? Stay.”
The operator is still talking. Asking questions. Telling me to keep pressure on the wound. Telling me help is coming. Telling me something about breathing, about keeping her conscious, about not moving her.
I hear none of it properly.
Octavia’s hand twitches once against my shirt.
Hope slams into me so fast it hurts.
“That’s it,” I say immediately, too desperate, my voice shaking so badly the words nearly shred apart. “That’s it, baby. Stay right there. Stay with me. Squeeze my hand. Come on. Come on.”
