“Please,” Sean said. “Don’t leave. Just wait. Isobel will be here.”
Kywyn’s gaze grew distant. “I love you,” he said one last time, and then the air whooshed from his lungs, and his body went still.
“No!” Sean shook his father’s shoulder, but it didn’t make a difference. His chest didn’t move. His blue eyes stared, unseeing. “No. No! Wake up!”
He shook harder despite the logic that told him to stop, to accept it. His fingers gripped tight into Kywyn’s shirt, and then he was begging.
Please. Please bring him back. Please!
Bowenn reached out, but Sean shoved his hands away. He didn’t want to be soothed. He didn’t need comforting.
He needed his father back.
“Ashanta, please?—”
Sean bent over his father’s body and took a shuddering breath. “His body is still warm. We just need?—”
“No,Ashanta,” Bowenn said. “He is gone. Come with me. You don’t need to see any more of this.”
It couldn’t be.
His father wasn’t dead.
He wasn’t wearing his father’s blood on his hands like morbid finger paint.
Hisfather.
The only family he had left.
Flashes of his mother’s body attacked, spiraling with this new tragedy, and something in Sean’s soul cracked in two. No ice could hold it together, no frost could numb the pain.
He split apart. A silent plea to make it stop ripped from his throat.
His father had died protecting him.
“Please,” he whispered again.
“Sean,” Bowenn said, gentle but firm. It was thefirst time that name had ever passed the pixie’s lips, and Sean looked up with scratchy eyes to match his stare. “You must grieve later. We are not safe here.”
Sean gazed around at the fallen bodies, thrown about haphazardly like an errant child’s toys. The Indies could come back. They could bring reinforcements.
Footsteps pounded through the office space behind him, but Sean didn’t retreat. He knew who it was by the shortening of the cord between them.
David skidded to a stop. Blood had soaked through his shirt, but he appeared unharmed. His stare landed on Kywyn, and though his face remained blank, the connection inside wrenched hard, ripping away a portion of Sean’s grief to entomb in David’s heart. “No,” he whispered.
Isobel approached more slowly. She gasped at the scene, and her eyes filled with tears. “Kywyn?”
Sean shook his head. “He’s gone.”
“Braddock and Naerys as well,” Kiana said, checking the pulse of their fallen comrades.
“Aye,” Bowenn said gravely. “We shall carry them to our conveyance on the roadside.”
Sean nodded, moving to stand.
“No,Ashanta,” Bowenn said, staying him with a hand. “Allow us. Take a moment.”
While the pixies set to work, Sean sat back on his heels, his gaze on his bloody hands. His mind retreated to a dark, isolated place.
