Page 139 of The Girl Who Should Be Dead

Ambra twists more power into her chest, to try to stop the quivering of her heart.

“Or, a third,” Gurlien continues, “he wants to manipulate.”

The phone screen lights up, a text, and they both pause to read it.

UNKNOWN NUMBER (4:02 AM): She will kill you after this, don’t think you can escape.

Ambra scoffs, and for the first time, it doesn’t hurt her chest. “I won’t,” she assures him.

His lips twitch. “I gathered that.”

Another text.

UNKNOWN NUMBER (4:03 AM): I assume Nalissa tried to bargain with you?

UNKNOWN NUMBER (4:04 AM): I won’t.

“He’s going intimidation,” Gurlien says, picking up the phone and gesturing with it for emphasis.

“You faced a ley line,” Ambra says, and shakily buttons the shirt together before pulling on a pair of the pants they had left here. She palms the pants. The pocket knife’s still stuck in the pocket, and she smiles at it, brief. “Why do they think words would scare you?”

He watches her, a funny sort of smile on his face, before he shakes his head. “I missed you.”

It hits a chord inside of her, a chord of emotion shedidn’t know she still had, and she swallows past the sudden lump in her throat.

It’s brutal, the surge of sensation she’s experiencing, and her fingertips shake from something completely new. Like her stomach had fallen out and her gut tightens and her heart aches all over again.

It’s a little like losing Misia.

In the sudden dread, the sudden complete loss of control over the emotions, the rushed scrambling to make sense of the change. Of the stark terror that this could happen, that this is at all a possibility, of the certainty that everything is different.

And he’s still standing in front of her, a fond half-smile on his face, next to an array of horrible foods and the backpack without a gun.

“Oh no,” she whispers, and his brows flash up in alarm.

“What?” he asks, leaning towards her, grasping towards the bag. “Do we need to run, do we need to go, what—”

She shakes her head, the heart pounding, her mouth dry. “I’m…”

She doesn’t have words for this sort of thing, not anymore, and it’s wholly impossible for her to think them for Gurlien.

He leans back, gaze wary, and his hand goes to the leash, like he’s testing for something.

“It’s not him, it’s not that, I just…” she trails off again, gaping at herself, then shuts her eyes, as if eliminating one sense could heal her. “Human bodies experience things different.”

“I can’t imagine a gun wound is very fun,” Gurlien says, his voice still wary, like he’s expecting this conversation to go wrong at any moment. “Not to mention any pain that comes with healing.”

Healing. Right.

Ambra twists more power into herself, to brute-force the healing to be faster, to knit the skin together.

After a moment of watching her like a hawk, Gurlien slowly starts to repack the backpack, pulling a knife from the kitchen for self-defense, a few changes of clothing, and when he passes by her, the edge of his sleeve brushes Ambra’s.

And that splits her willpower in two.

She grabs his hand, his skin brilliantly hot, catching him off guard, and pulls him close. He staggers, propping himself up on the bed, arms bracketed around her.

There’s a moment, a quick inhale, before she curls her hand around the collar of his shirt and kisses him, straining her neck up.

---