Page 167 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

It’s enough to spur her into motion, and she scrambles to his side, to his mother’s still body.

And despite the exhaustion, despite the headache pounding into Delina’s mind, she lets herself sink into the sensation of the death. Into the knowledge she gets by just the touch.

The bullet punctured through the artery, grazing her lung and through her rib cage, chipping one of the bones on its way out of the body. The blood pooled in the chest cavity, in the lungs, all electrical signals stopped.

It’s a far worse death than Maison had.

Slow, Delina exhales, letting her eyes flutter shut.

Maison’s saying something, but Delina pushes it away from herself. There’s too much with the body, too much that needs to be done before she can bring her back.

She seals the puncture first, socketing the chipped rib back into place. It’s small, but if she had left it there, his mother would die all over again in moments.

The blood in the lungs take more effort, and Delina pushes it into place, drawing it out drop by drop.

Against her hands, Maison’s mother’s body spasms. She’s not alive, some leftover signal to the brain.

Slowly, too slowly, Delina knits the artery back into place, and sweat drips into the dust on her back. She has to make it perfect, it has to, despite her ears ringing and her hands trembling.

Behind her, remote, she hears the demon Ambra inhale, pained. It’s a threat, back there, but she can’t think, not when Maison’s holding his dead mother, not when she has to do this.

Delina’s breath hitches, as the elasticity of the artery isn’t perfect, isn’t completely smooth, and there’s blood still on the skin. There’s blood all over Delina’s hands, sticky and rapidly cooling, cooling too fast. The rest of her blood will cool, then still, and she won’t be able to—

Before she can complete that thought, before she can will herself to even think it, Delina sends a shock of electricity to the brain, sparking it into action.

And then that’s all Delina can do, all possibilities vanishing before her.

Delina blinks her eyes open, and Maison’s staring at her, stricken. His mother isn’t breathing, isn’t moving, there’s nothing, until—

With a small hitch, her chest moves, a deep, gentle breath, like someone deeply asleep.

Delina sits back, exhaustion prickling her vision with black.

She did it. She did it, his mother’s breathing. Alive. The blood sluggishly starting to pump back through the veins, the heart beating.

In front of her, Maison’s mother blinks, and the discomfort of it ricochets down Delina’s senses. His mother was shot, and she’s picking up that her eyes are scratchy.

“Mom?” Maison repeats, and slowly, ever so slowly, the woman lifts her eyes to him. “Mom, can you hear me?”

For too long of a beat there’s no reaction, nothing, before her face crumbles and she jolts herself to sit upright, then coughs.

“Maison?” she asks, and her voice is whisper soft. “Maison, is that…”

As if seeing beyond the doors for the first time, she looks past the bars, at the carnage. At Gurlien holding the gun, at Ambra huddled on the floor. At Chloe ducked behind Gurlien, like she’s afraid…Then…

At Delina.

Her eyes are the same grey as Maison’s.

Trembling, she reaches a hand down to the ragged hole in her clothing, then over to Delina.

“Mom,” Maison says, desperate, and his mother tilts her head up to him. She’s also exhausted, she’s lost a lot of blood, she’s dehydrated, and Delina can feel all of it.

“Maison,” his mother repeats, and there’s some steel in her voice, something stronger than should come from a woman who was just dead. “I told you not to risk anything.”

Still, his mother pulls him into a hug, and Maison all but collapses into it, his face crumbling, before he reaches for Delina and grasps her hand as well.

Slowly, outside the little cell, Ambra climbs to her feet, as if she thinks that any motion will jerk her back down to the ground, and Gurlien twitches the gun back up to her.

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