“I know you are, Cherry."
My heart breaks hearing the regret in his voice.
“I didn’t…I mean…”
He takes another hit from the cigarette and watches me with his mismatched eyes.
“Tell me what to do. I’ll do it. Just please—” I reach out for him and he pivots away.
“You want to know what to do?” The cigarette hangs at his side, clipped between his fingers, glowing in the dark. The night smells of honeysuckle and burning tobacco and Vane.
Tell me what to do.
I’m desperate for his forgiveness and I’ll do fucking anything.
“Start running,” he says.
I gulp down a breath and stagger back as his violet eye goes black and his hair turns white.
“Start running, Cherry. Because I’m going to fucking kill you.”
24
CHERRY
I start running.
There’s nothing else to do but run.
But I’m not built to run faster than the Dark One and I sure as hell can’t fight him.
I follow the path away from the house, my heart hammering so hard in my ears, my ear drums are ringing.
I can hear his footsteps behind me.
His terror, the Death Shadow’s terror, washes through me like poison. It makes me feel sick and desperate and so fucking alone.
I can’t outrun him.
Will it hurt when he kills me?
I reach the main road and turn toward James’s territory, toward the only place I can call home.
And just as I round the corner where the path forks, a shadow comes racing toward me.
My brain isn’t working—it’s too full of adrenaline to make out what it is.
But the voice that yells at me is one I know.
“Duck!” Smee shouts.
She veers sharply to the side of the road, her pace at full speed, and jumps at a large boulder, propelling herself into the air.
I skid on the gravel and slam to the ground as she sails over top of me, her dagger drawn, clutched in hand, the blade glinting in the moonlight.
Rolling to my knees, I turn at the last second and watch as she drives the blade through Vane’s chest.
The sickening crack of a bone breaking rents through the night.
“No!” I scream and scramble to my feet. “Smee, no!”
Vane’s eyes are black, his hair white, but there is pain etched into his face as he wraps his hands around the blade, blood pouring from his palms and his chest.
“She’s someone’s sister,” Smee says and leans into the hilt, sinking the blade deeper.
In the dark, several etchings on the blade pulse with light.
“You knew better, Dark One,” Smee adds as he chokes on blood.
“Smee, please,” I grab for her arm. “Please don’t kill him.”
She looks over at me.
“Please.”
She yanks the blade out as the others appear at the top of the hill.
“Vane!” Winnie screams.
Smee ignores the blood dripping from her sword and rams it back into its sheath. “Go,” she tells me and shoves me down the road, keeping herself between me and the rest of them.
I start moving, but I can’t help but watch Vane over my shoulder as I stagger away.
The blood pouring out of him and the surprise on his face.
The Dark One thought he was invincible.
I think we all thought so too.
He drops to his knees, clutching at his chest and though he just tried to hunt me down like an animal, I can’t shake the fear that he might die and this is the way he will see me last—a terrified girl who betrayed him and then left him for dead.
I want to help him, but I think I’m the last person he wants at his side.
I can almost feel his repulsion.
“Go!” Smee yells again and shoves me.
This time, I run and don’t look back.
25
KAS
“Get him up!” Pan screams.
I hook one of Vane’s arms around my shoulder while Pan takes the other. Vane is practically dead weight and he can barely get his feet beneath him.
Blood is fucking everywhere.
“Vane!” Darling screams again and Bash hooks into her, yanking her back, trying to keep her from slowing us down.
The air smells of violence and regret.
We get him in the house and up the stairs to the loft and drop him on the sofa.
He’s listless and pale. His arm drops from his side as his eyes roll back in his head.
“Fix him,” Darling says. She has her tiny hands fisted in Bash’s shirt. “Fix him!”
“We’re trying, Darling,” my brother says. “Calm down.”
“Calm down? Calm down?!” She comes over to the sofa and hangs over the back. “Can’t he heal? Why is he so pale? Why isn’t he healing?”