Page 43
The creature surges toward her. Its arm extends again, long claws eager to cut.
I take in the whole scene in one terrible instant of clarity.
Stark is twenty feet out and closing fast, running with everything he has toward a second mother who no longer knows him.
The monster continues gliding closer to Esme, about ten paces away now.
I hover a tiny bit closer to Esme than I do to Stark. And I only have one chance.
The math is simple and inescapable.
The choice isn’t really a choice at all.
Esme’s connected to my mission. I need her alive. It’s not sentiment or attraction. My decision has nothing to do with any of the complicated feelings tangling through me every time she’s near.
In my heart, an option exists that’s more hope than an actual plan. That thing wants Esme. It’s drawn to her magic like nothing else in this clearing. If I get her out, it might follow us and leave the others alone.
It’s the kind of call I’ve made a hundred times before in the field.
Except I’m not leaving a soldier behind.
I’m abandoning a child.
One who calls for his mama with every breath. Who should be asleep in a warm bed somewhere, not racing through the rain toward a monster that will erase him from the inside out.
Gods help me…I still choose Esme.
I grab her around the waist. She gasps as I haul her backward, lifting her feet clear off the ground.
“The child!” She shrieks, claws at my arm, and tries to twist free. “Agnar! The baby!”
I don’t stop.
Can’t stop.
My legs eat the earth in long strides, my boots finding purchase on earth still churning from my assault.
Esme battles me the whole way, her nails piercing my forearm, her feet kicking at my shins. “Stop! Please! Go back! You have to—”
Behind us, the toddler’s scream cuts off with a terrible finality.
The silence that follows is even worse.
Chapter Fourteen
Esme
Slung over Agnar’s shoulder like a sack of grain, his strides bounce my stomach until my injury shrieks. By the time Agnar finally stops, my tears have long since dried on my cheeks.
As he staggers to a halt next to a tree and unceremoniously drops me on my rump, that numbness spreads through my whole body. Sitting in the grass, feeling the blades and seed heads slip over my skin, my body still reacts as if we’re fleeing, as if the pounding has become part of me.
“You left them. You left the baby.” It all seems like a dream.
The dark woods around us shred the moonlight into razor thin silver streamers, leaving me mostly blind, my mind filling in the spaces between the illumination. Agnar rises, one outstretched arm pressed against a tree, holding himself up as he heaves. Rivers of sweat run down his neck, steaming in the chilly night. His coppery hair falls loose from its tie and drapes forward as he hangs his head.
If I could feel anything, would I be sweating too?
I doubt it. I did nothing to send my heart racing. Only watched in anguish as the distance between us and those we should have protected grew wider. Curling my hands into fists, I tear at the grass in an attempt to center myself. “You abandoned a child.”
