Page 57 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

Delina forces herself to not look, to not give it away. “I want reassurances that you’re not going to hurt them,” she says, and Maison breathes deep, like he recognizes her tone of voice. Like he recognizes her bluffing. “And don’t do anything to Maison’s mom.”

“His name’s not Maison, that’s a lie,” he says, before inclining his head. “That can be arranged.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Chloe slowly, deliberately slowly, unzips the backpack, every motion slight to not draw attention.

The magic coils tighter in his fists, and the man pays it no attention, like he doesn’t know she can tell.

The creepily blue eyes bore into her, barely visible from over Maison’s shoulder, and all at once it’s like she’s drenched in water, cold climbing over her skin, shuddering through her body.

“Don’t scan her like that,” Maison blurts out, skirting her further back behind him. “She doesn’t know—”

His hands tightening over the magic is the only warning, before it snaps out towards Delina, the air cracking in its wake.

Maison jerks his hand forward, and the magic crackles to the ground, useless, sparks shimmering through the air.

“You found one,” the man snarls, all pretenses of civility gone, abrupt, “you can’t let her live free, you can’t.”

“Delina,” Maison starts, before the man twists the magic again, crackling it against whatever barrier Maison puts in place. “You need to run.”

Delina backs up, half turning before the strip of magic snaps at her, shattering through whatever barrier.

Maison grabs her, a spark cracking between them, yanking her back, and the spike of magic just grazes by her shoulder, ripping into the rain jacket and sending a long line of fire down her arm.

She stumbles, her own pain blocking out everyone else’s for one brief second, and she gets one crystal clear moment of seeing everything.

One crystal clear moment, where Korhonen twists his hands around more magic, a bored expression on his face. Where Chloe draws her hand out of the backpack, a dagger in her fist, balanced for a throw. Where blood wells up against her cut, immediate and vivid red, redder than she would have ever thought. Where the pavement is damp and the sun is shining and there’s nobody else around and birds trill in the background and Maison’s in front of her and the line of his shoulders is long and —

Korhonen snaps the magic over to her, lancing towards her, too fast, too fast for her to move, too fast for anyone, too fast for her to breathe, too fast for her to evade.

Maison grips her arm, and jerks himself in front of her.

The magic lances through his chest, bright, crackling blinding against her awareness, and blood splashes against her.

He doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t say a thing, just slumps back towards her, heavy, and she scrambles to keep him upright, her hands catching on his jacket, fumbling.

Chloe screams, high pitched and loud, and Delina catches a glimpse of a dagger in flight, striking Korhonen deep near the hip, before he twists away and disappears, the dagger clattering to the ground.

And all at once, all the sound slams back into Delina, and she staggers, her hands slick with blood already, and—

“Here, get him down,” Gurlien is saying, and his hands help her lower Maison onto the damp pavement, and Maison’s face is pale, too pale, his eyes wide open and panicked.

“Here, put pressure,” Chloe says, pressing a sweatshirt into the wound on Maison’s chest.

Maison gasps at the contact, like he can’t quite take a breath, can’t get enough air. There’s pain, somewhere in all of it, almost drowned out by the fear and horror and terror.

Delina scrabbles for the sweatshirt, holding it against the blood, against the actual wound in Maison, but there’s blood bubbling up in Maison’s mouth, so acrid Delina can almost taste it.

He’s scared. She can feel it in the throb of her shoulder and the wheeze coming from his breath and brilliant fire of pain in his chest.

“Gurlien, help here,” Chloe instructs, and Gurlien does, leveraging his weight onto the sweatshirt.

There’s too much blood, and a distant part of Delina refuses to latch onto that, and her hands shake. He can’t be this injured, he can’t, he was just joking about her mother and Frenchmen and grabbing the bags from her.

Maison’s grey eyes lock on hers, his hand curling up around her wrist, a small sound wrenching from his throat.

There’s blood on his hand, too, slick against her skin.

He gasps, again, and not enough oxygen is getting to his brain, electrical signals going haywire, sparking against her awareness like static.

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