Page 89 of Wicked Court

She chokes, struggling to hold back tears.

And it hits me.

Oh, shit.

“Your brother.” I curse. The rush of amusement that remains on my face fades behind my gaze. A sigh escapes me, the guilt piercing through my usual arrogance like a gunshot. “Fuck, sweetwitch. I wasn’t thinking.”

Her brows knot together, hands clasped tightly over her chest, as if trying to contain the grief that vibrates off her in waves. Her eyes glimmer with unshed tears.

Oh, no. “Please don’t cry.”

I don’t know what to do with women who cry.

Rubbing the back of my neck awkwardly, a gesture far detached from my usual swagger, I add, “Bringing you here wasn’t all for show. This overlook, this spot, is my favorite one in all of Titan Falls. No one seems to know about it but me. And now you, I guess.”

Her lips part slightly as if she is about to answer, but silence stretches between us instead. The aggressive energy that usually dominates our interactions is absent now, leaving behind an unsettling void filled with an unspoken apology.

Not for her—she did nothing wrong—but for me.

“Do you want me to apologize?”

It’s not what I meant to say, but the words slip out before I can cage them.

A sound that might have been a laugh or cry escapes her lips as she wipes her cheeks with the back of her hand. “You? Say sorry? That’d be the day.”

The insult doesn’t sting as much it should. Instead, it gnaws at my conscience like a rat in the cellar.

“I was just trying to...” Hell if I know what I was trying to do.

“Kill yourself?” Elara retorts instantly. The vehemence in her voice surprises me.

I feel stripped down to my core. It’s an unfamiliar sensation that makes my skin crawl. Each passing second tastes like sulfur on my tongue—a taste I’ve been trying to swallow since I was a teen.

“No,” I reply, finding myself going on the defensive. “I was trying to make you feel.”

Her face alters at my words. Eyebrows furrowing, lips pursing. “Feel what?”

“Alive,” I articulate slowly, carefully picking my words. “Like we’re living on the edge and one false move could send us over.”

She remains silent for a long moment, then breaks eye contact and looks out at the void beyond the cliff’s edge. The wind plays with her hair, causing it to dance around her face like flames seeking oxygen.

“I don’t need to be on the verge of death to know that I’m alive,” she finally says without looking back at me.

I turn around and look at it with her, the rocky drop-off illuminated by the moonlight.

I don’t fear death—never have, never will—but Elara does. She fears it enough for the both of us. I know it’s not her own death she fears but those of the people she cares about—her brother and now, perhaps against all odds, me.

After a while, she shivers slightly from the frigid mountain air against her cloak, a poor excuse for a covering. A sudden rush of disgust spreads across that beating thing in my chest. It’s a hand-me-down cloak, one given to plenty of girls who are escorted in and out of Thornhaven, washed and rewashed due to the copious amounts of bodily fluids that cover it.

I’m not disgusted by the cloak. I’ve never cared one way or another who wears it or how many times it’s used. I just don’t want it on her. Not Elara.

Shrugging off the strange feeling in my gut, I yank the cloak off her shoulders and my jacket is on her before she can object.

She looks at me for a second, then accepts the jacket without a word, pulling it tight around herself. I turn away, facing the void beyond the cliff, and toss the offensive fabric over. I watch it billow in the wind until it’s absorbed by the black.

“Wilder.”

Her tone is different now. Softer. Afraid?

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