Page 151 of The World Undone

“Max?” The voice was louder now, and it sliced through my racing thoughts long enough to pull my focus.

“Declan?”

She pulled me to her in a tight hug. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. We didn’t get here in time—we tried, it was?—”

“Ro?” I croaked out, my voice raw from the force of vomiting. I pulled out of Dec’s hold, frantic now as I searched for him. I didn’t want to be comforted, didn’t want her to make this better, to make things okay in the way only Dec knew how to do. “Ro? Where is he?”

I screamed his name over and over again. My vision blurring as I fought back tears.

Not him. Not Ro. He couldn’t be gone.

Declan grabbed me, her hold firm but still somehow gentle. She was speaking, trying to calm me, but I couldn’t form meaning from her words.

“Ro!” I yelled, my voice puncturing through the roar of the fire as my lungs filled with smoke. I coughed, scratching against Dec’s hold, as I fought to push through, to find him.

“Max!”

I sobbed out a breath of relief as familiar blue eyes formed in front of me, blurry through my tears, but impossible not to recognize.

“I’m here, I’m here.” Ro pulled me to him, and I sank against his familiar form, clutching his shirt as I fought to hold myself up. “I’m okay.”

A loud crash echoed around us, the ground rumbling from the force of it. Ro ducked, tried redirecting us away. I was vaguely aware of another building collapsing, but I couldn’t bring myself to move away from his hug, to spring into action.

I’d almost lost him. For a brief, terrifying moment, I was convinced that I had—that he’d been lost to this town, like the rest of them.

Dec grabbed hold of us both and the familiar sensation of shifting from one spot to another rolled through me.

We didn’t go far, just a few feet away from the bulk of the damage—far enough that we weren’t in immediate danger from the fire, only the smoke.

“We checked,” she whispered, her voice trembling with regret as she pressed a soft kiss to my hair, “they’re all gone. I’m so, so sorry. We shouldn’t have?—”

I shook my head, finally pulling back from Ro, from them both.

“What—what did you do?”

“We were trying to find a way, to get to Xavier and Jarrod, the stone—” her breathing was stilted as she fought back tears. “It was reckless, we should have known that they’d find out, that they’d take revenge—but I never thought something like this—I’m sorry. I’m so, fucking sorry, Max.”

I fell to my knees as the horror of the town spread out before us—the image more hellish than anything I’d experienced in the deepest depths of hell. The fire had been roaring hard and long—it had already started ripping through the forest, the branches and dried leaves providing fresh kindling. I knew it would take hours—maybe days—to get it under control. How much more destruction, death, would the council be responsible for? Would I be responsible for?

Buildings crumbled and charred, and when I turned to the right, I saw a pile of bodies—most of them familiar.

Their necks had been slashed and they’d been stacked in a pile, as if they were haphazardly discarded, unimportant.

A hand, too small, curled around a plush toy.

A patch of familiar blonde hair, but I refused to let myself linger on it, to determine with any certainty if it belonged to Michael. If I didn’t verify, if I didn’t confirm it with absolute certainty, maybe I could live in the fairytale that they’d gotten away, that some of them had survived.

I choked on a sob, retching again, but there was nothing left in my stomach, only the bitter taste of bile.

The three of us sat there, clogged in the utter terror of the scene for what could have been five minutes or five hours—time had become meaningless.

Tears streaked Ro’s face, carving clean lines through the ash. His hands were covered in bloody cuts and burns, and when I looked down at Declan’s, I noticed hers were too.

Their clothes were singed and cut, with small holes burned through the fabric where fire had eaten it away.

They’d been digging through the rubble, fighting to find someone—anyone. That’s why they hadn’t returned right away, why Arnell hadn’t heard back from them. They were trying to salvage something, to save the people here.

My chest squeezed at the thought.

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