“Come on, Goldfinch…” I murmur, urgency notched around my neck like a noose.
There’s the sound of shuffling footsteps, then Digby is pushing his way forward to kneel next to me. “Is she okay?” he demands again.
When I still don’t answer, his hand grabs the front of my shirt, and he tugs me to face him with surprising strength, considering the bruised state of him. “What did you do?” he snarls through swollen lips split with blood and frost.
Osrik is there in an instant, lifting Digby and pulling him away. “What did you do?” Digby’s shout is mangled, hoarse with accusation, but it melds with the voice of my own inner terror. The two of them exchange some heated words, but fear is too busy slamming in my ears for me to hear what they say.
What did I do?
The panic and fear that’s been latched to me since the moment I used my power on her comes flaring up in the form of a tremor through my hands.
“Why isn’t she waking up?” Lu asks beside me, but I don’t know. I don’t fucking know, so I can’t say a damn thing.
I clasp her cold cheeks in my hands, hissing at the pain throbbing in my fingers. Even now, it’s as if my power wants to split from my skin and go back to her.
Her aura is dull. Just wisps of dreary gold barely skimming against her silhouette. It should be gleaming brightly despite the night, yet it’s nothing like the flare of potent power and life that usually shines from her.
I waited too long.
I should’ve rotted her sooner, before she’d nearly drained herself. I should’ve landed faster, ripped my magic out of her earlier.
“Don’t do this,” I grit out. To her, to the gods.
Not now.
Not after everything. Not when I just fucking got her.
“I need you to wake up,” I order, but really, it’s a plea pulled from the pit of my soul. What if she never wakes up? What if that clinging seed of rot has taken root inside of her and won’t let her go?
The whole reason I used my magic on her was to stop her from draining herself to death. But I made it fucking worse. I made it worse, and now my own power is lashing out against me like a thousand serpents ready to bite, while she’s been tainted with my magic.
My head drops, forehead pressing against hers, my hands still on her cold cheeks. “Don’t do this,” I plead, eyes shut tight. “You’re stronger than this, Goldfinch. You are. So. Wake. Up.”
She doesn’t.
“Fuck!” Jerking upright, my fist pummels the snow beside me, the meat of my hand splitting open from the sharp ice packed into the ground. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
I can hear Digby fighting like hell against the others, cursing me, threats and profanity slung against my back like a whip. Beating me with the realization—
“I did this.” Three words cut from the keenest guilt.
Lu’s lips press together at my declaration. “So undo it.”
“I fucking tried!” I snap, frustration bringing my hand up to drive through my hair. “I am trying.”
I can’t think straight. My pulse is pounding at my temples, the ground is shaking beneath my feet, something is roaring in my ears. My magic wails inside of me, bleeding into my irises, making me see lines that are not there. I’m pouring rot out now, too much, too fast, making it melt down into the ground, weakening the earth, spoiling its surface.
I hear shouts, or maybe that’s the wind or the power bucking in my bones.
“Rip, your power…”
My entire body is shaking, every inch of my skin being prodded and stretched, wanting to lash out, and my rot starts to flood the ground, reaching, hissing, wanting to spread and explode…
BAM!
I go flying back at the force of a fist to my face, falling back into the snow for the second time in the course of a minute, once again stunned.
“Get your shit together,” my brother fumes over me, kneeling even as he lifts me back up from where he sucker punched me. My furious eyes latch onto his face. “You’re leaking rot all over the Divine-damned place. Suck it up right now. You don’t have the luxury of losing control.”
I blink, Ryatt’s snapped words somehow grounding me to the present. A glance down shows that the snow at our feet is browned and sickly, veins like poisonous threads come to spread their toxins. It stretches out in a perfect circle, spoiling the ground and sucking up the moisture from the snow, collapsing it in rubbled ruin.
I take a breath and fist my hands, managing to pull it back before my power can spread any further, managing to pull it back in and in and in…