Page 56 of Mud

I expected to make impact with the ground any second, but I didn’t. Instead, arms wrapped around me, strong arms I’d once lived in, really, trulylived in,and then I wasn’t falling anymore. I wasn’t putting pressure on my bad leg at all.

Blink, blink, blink,and Taland’s face came into view again as he looked down at me, thick brows narrowed as curse words spilled out of his lips in a hiss-like whisper. He went on and on while he grabbed my chin in his hands and looked at me like I was a problem he didn’t want. A problem he didn’t need.

I was so sick of being people’s problem, I realized.

“What happened? How did you get here, Rosabel?” he urged, and my neck no longer held my head properly, so he had to keep his hand around my chin.

“I…I’m…” I swallowed hard, prepared to say it. “I was turned to…I’m…”

I couldn’t. I couldn’t think it and I couldn’t say it.

“Uber,” I ended up choking. “Uber brought me.”

Another string of curse words that sounded like a different language.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” he whispered, barely loud enough for me to hear. “You shouldn’t have come here, you shouldn’t have come…”

I wanted to smile, but I no longer had the energy. My eyes had closed, too, and I hadn’t even noticed. I wanted to hold onto him for one last time before I died, but I couldn’t get my arms to move at all.

“It’s okay,” I thought I said. “I will never blame you.”

When he killed me today, I wouldn’t blame him. I just really hoped he made it quick.

“For fuck’s sake, sweetness. Hold on,” Taland whispered, mad as all hell. “Just hold on and don’t make a sound.”

Funny that he thought I could.

But it was okay, much easier to let go than I thought. Taland was dragging me—forward or back, I couldn’t tell and it didn’t matter.Good call,I thought to myself. This was most definitely the best way to go.

Before unconsciousness took me, I realized two things that gave me some semblance ofpeacefor my tormented soul. I’d come to the blue house behind the hill because I would rather die at the hands of someone I loved than at the hands of my grandmother.

I’d come to the blue house behind the hill because death was a price I’d eagerly pay just to see Taland Tivoux one more time.

“Wakey, wakey, Miss La Rouge. We’ve been waiting a loooong time to meet you.”

Sleep was reluctant to let me go, even though I could have sworn that I heard those exact words coming at me from somewhere far away.

I had no clue where I was or what was happening to me, and the last thought I had was that I was finally at peace where I’d come to die. I remembered the relief of realizing I’d made the right choice with thelastchoice I was ever going to make, and that had felt mighty fine, too.

I remembered Taland’s face as he looked down at me, shocked and concerned and disgusted at the same time, how he’d cursed and how he’d told me that I shouldn’t have come to find him in the blue house behind the hill.

Back then I thought I knew why—because he’d kill me for betraying him the way I did.

Now, I wasn’t so sure because that voice that was calling for me to wake up was not Taland’s.

It was someone else’s, and I did not like the sound of it one bit.

Like a single drop of water falling on the surface of the stillest lake, thoughts and memories expanded in my mind like ripples. Images flashed before me—of that text message, of that footage, of catfairies and Michael and Madeline, of the Uber driver who’d brought me all the way here—almost three hours away from the IDD Headquarters.

My eyes opened and my body came alive, and I realized I was really breathing. My heart was still beating. My leg was no longer throbbing in pain the way it did the last time I was awake. Not healed, but it was healing. The sweet taste of the last of the pain coated it from my knee down to my ankle, and I was a hundred percent sure that I wasnotbleeding anymore.

Someone had healed me—with magic.

And my wrists were secured with thick chains behind my back.

A muffled sound left my lips involuntarily when I moved my head and realized I was sitting up, chained to a chair in a dark room, and even though my leg was no longer bleeding, it had bled plenty. That blood was no longer in me, and I hadn’t eaten, and I was exhausted, and my magic?—

“The little bird is finally awake.”

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