Page 123
Which one?
Which one?
Which one?
There are too many wheels. Too many hooves. Too many fleeing cowards carving panic into the earth.
“Olive,” I whisper. No answer. Only fire behind me. Fog before me and the road taking her everywhere at once. Lazarus slows beside me, breathing hard. Alcott arrives seconds later. No one speaks. That is how I know. All the strength leaves my body at once. I stare at the tracks until they blur. Then something inside me tears open. I slam my fist into the cobblestone and pain explodes through my hand.
Good.
Again. Bone cracks. Once more, then the blood spreads across my knuckles and darkens the wet stone. Again.
“Edward!” Alcott drops beside me.
I swing again. The impact shudders up my arm and I welcome it. I deserve worse, I deserve every broken bone in my body for letting him touch her, for looking away. Alcott grabs my wrist, but I rip free and strike the stones again.
“Stop!” he shouts.
“I lost her!” My voice is not a voice anymore. It is something dragged from an animal with its leg caught in iron.
“I lost her. I lost her. I lost her,” I repeat over and over.
Lazarus kneels in front of me, trying to catch my other hand. I try to hit the ground again, but he takes the blow across his palm, grimacing as my blood smears over his rings.
“Edward,” he states calmly.
“No.”
“Look at me.”
“No!”
Alcott seizes me from behind, arms locking around my chest. I fight him, I do not mean to, but I do. I fight like a boy dragged from the only person he had left. “Let go!”
“No,” Alcott snarls in my ear. His voice shakes, my brother’s voice. Not Darkness.
Alcott.
“Hit me if you must, but I will not let you break your hands when we need them to get her back.” The words should reach me, but they do not.
“He has her,” I rasp.
“I know,” Alcott states sadly.
“He will hurt her,” I exclaim panicked.
“I know.”
“He will use her to break me.”
Alcott’s arms tighten around me. “Then do not break.”
I laugh, it is ugly. Maddening.
“I am already broken.”
“No.” Lazarus’s voice cuts through the fog.
