Page 41 of King of the Dawn

Let her live, I said, feeling the hot tears fall down my cheeks.

I wouldn’t live in this world if she wasn’t breathing somewhere in it. And I would rip my heart out a million times, and feed it to the birds again and again for all eternity, if it meant that she had a chance at the life she deserved.

Let her live, and I will let her go. I swear, I will set her free if only she lives…

Chapter Seventeen

Aoibheann

I was alive, floating over a tumultuous ocean full of silver fish that glinted in the morning rays. The steady rhythm lulled me into a white dream. A single magpie flew above, a flame following behind it as it sang a song. Then another flew beneath it, carried in its wake.

One for sorrow, two for joy…

I looked down at my palm to see a single, brilliant crimson rose, the petals matching the blood that cut across my palm. Beyond it on the rocky beach was another magpie, blinking in the sun. Then another of the black and white birds skittered over the water, bobbing along the waves like a stone, before reaching up to the sky and flying towards the heavens.

Three for a girl, four for a boy.

My belly swelled, and I heard the murmur of voices around, and the pounding of the scene around me. I was in Ireland. I knew that. It was no beach on this side of the Atlantic. Home. It was salt air and brine, and fishermen in Aran sweaters, casting their nets from their boats.

In the distance, was a boy in a plaid sweater, and a girl with red hair in ribbons. It was me. Me and Ryan. Three little magpies sat at their feet, as the pair of them - the pair of us? - tossed them bread crumbs.

Five for silver, six for gold… seven for a secret never been told.

“Come back to me, Eve.” The voice came down from the sky, surrounding me and holding me, raising me up from the ground. It beckoned me like the voice of God, pulling me back to where I came from. “Come back.”

This was a pleasant dream. I knew that. But it wasn’t my home. Not anymore. This scene that I had longed for - the life I had begged to return to - was no longer mine. The people weren’t mine either.

It was time to go back home where I belonged. Back to the comfort of darkness, and strength. To the place of daggers and shadows, where a man waited for me. A man who eased my pain and gave me the strength to fly with those magpies.

Chapter Eighteen

Jericho

“She needs to be in a different room,” I bellowed at the terrified nurse who clutched a phone to her chest. “Do you know who I am?”

I was three seconds away from grabbing the nurse by the collar and shaking her. I was ready to throw my might around as Pakhan, and let them all know that the king of the fucking underground was here, ready to take them all to hell if they did not get my wife into a better room, where I could secure her.

Uniformed police milled about because the asshole, Brock, had the misfortune of still being alive, but on death’s door. They wanted to arrest him and do a full investigation, and were lingering to harass my wife to find out what happened.

I wanted them gone. I wanted to toss them out on their ass, and tell them that they had no business being in the same building as my wife, much less in the same fucking room.

I wanted to make a call to the highest echelons that I knew - the fucking CIA desk, or even fucking higher if I had to - to get these creeps away.

“You can’t, isoveli,” my sister had told me when I crushed the phone in my hand. “You’ll blow your cover. And ours. Don’t you understand how close we are?”

I didn’t fucking care. Blow up the goddamn plan. End the entire fucking scheme to end the mafia wars in New York City and blow up the goddamn triangle trade. I did not fucking care.

“My wife is in there,” I growled at my sister, pushing her away.

She shook her head, walking around the corner, a phone to her fucking ear.

I terrorized the entire floor until the nurses were so terrified, they ran the moment they caught my eye.

I don’t know how long I stood outside her door, my palms against the surface, staring at the little window at her helpless, unconscious form. Her thin hand was covered in plastic tubes, her body covered in yellow iodine and dried blood as the machines around her beeped - her only real sign of life. God, I could barely see her breathing.

My throat clenched. I must have stayed there for hours, my eyes never moving from her form.

I don’t know when the Governor of Maschusetts arrived. It was as if he just materialized beside me.

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