Not fragile. Nobody who had seen her eyes would make that mistake twice. But delicate in the lines. High cheekbones. Soft mouth. Long lashes dark against skin gone too pale under the blood. A face that looked like it had been drawn by a careful hand and then given a spirit too fierce for the frame.
She was half-conscious, shaking, one hand pressed to her middle, the other curled near her chest like she was trying to hold herself together by force.
For a second, I couldn’t move.
Because I knew that face.
Older now.
Sharper.
Not a child anymore.
But not far enough from one for me to forget the line.
Edge’s daughter.
Forbidden to the core.
A shooting star fallen into the dirt, and I was the poor bastard stupid enough to reach for it.
“Shit,” I muttered.
I crouched low beside her and touched two fingers to her throat.
Pulse.
Fast.
Too fast, but there.
Her eyes fluttered.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
Her voice was raw and small.
It hit me harder than the explosion.
“Easy,” I said. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
She flinched anyway.
I wanted to kill whoever had made Edge’s daughter flinch like that.
Then I remembered the fire behind us and the burning cars and the screaming kids, and the thought turned complicated.
Her eyes opened halfway.
Dark.
Unfocused.
Huge.
She looked through me first, not at me. Whatever she had taken still had claws in her. Her pupils were wrong. Her breath came too quick. She was trapped somewhere between the desert and whatever nightmare the drugs had built inside her skull.
“Mandy?” she whispered.
