Page 185 of Twisting Beauty

I tumbled out and rolled onto my back, the gray Irish sky above never looking so fucking glorious.

But there was no time to rest.

I shoved off the jacket bunched around my arm and rolled to my knees, turning back to the house. Heat hit my face like an open oven.

Fuck. The whole damn carriage house was on fire.

The walls above me were being swallowed by angry flames, black smoke pouring out of the upper windows.

I crawled back to the basement window and looked down.

“Calm down.” Deargán was holding Rua up to the gap, or at least he was trying to. “For Christ’s sake⁠—”

She was clawing at his face, his neck, his hair, scrambling all over him like a wild animal, her eyes blown out wide, her face wet with spit and tears. “Get me out, get me out, get me out⁠—”

I reached down through the broken window and grabbed at her flailing arms. “Rua, take my hand.”

Shit. She was thrashing too hard to get a grip on her. Her fingers kept slipping out of mine.

Deargán shoved her up harder and I caught one of her wrists and then the other and I pulled.

She came through the window wrong, half on her side, her knee catching the frame, her face going into the dirt. We both tumbled back onto the grass.

I rolled to my knees again. Back to the window.

Almost there.

We were almost all free.

“Rua, we need to⁠—”

But she was already scrambling to her feet behind me, half sobbing, half heaving.

I turned just in time to see her run. “No, Rua! Come back!”

She didn’t stop. She didn’t look back, her small frame disappearing into the dark of the trees in seconds.

Hope sagged out of me. For the sister I’d almost gotten back. For Deargán.

Deargán.

I shoved my head and shoulders back through the window. The heat blasting back was unbearable.

He looked up at me from the basement floor, his arm clamped across his nose and mouth, the smoke so thick around him I could barely make out his face. The flames were eating through the ceiling, climbing the walls.

I reached one arm through and wedged the other against the outside of the wall to brace.

“Grab my hand,” I yelled over the roar of the flames and the menacing crackle of wood above us.

He looked at my hand, then at my face. “It won’t work.”

“Take my hand, goddamn it.” It came out broken, half a scream, half already a sob.

He reached up, his sweaty hand closing around mine.

I locked my grip and pulled.

I pulled with everything in me, with every scrap of strength left. I pulled until I screamed and my arm shook and my eyes burned and I couldn’t feel my hand anymore.