Page 147 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

Next to her, Killian arches his back, and for a split second the edges of him blur, fragmenting apart, before slamming back into sudden clarity again. Flailing, he grabs her hand, and in his grasp claws prickle at Chloe’s palm.

Chloe stills, and the only sound meeting her ears is his breath.

He blinks up to the blue sky, his eyes blank and reflecting red, as he clings onto her hand for dear life.

And Chloe is many things, but prone to panic isn’t one of them, and she can deal with whatever this sound thing is later.

“Killian, look at me,” she orders, and she doesn’t know if she’s speaking too loud, if she’s yelling, but Killian just shuts his eyes. “No, look at me.”

Squeezing her hand, he slowly turns his head, and his eyes don’t quite focus on her, like he’s concussed. Like he’s taken a blow to the head, something unseen, and it’s taking all of his power to just hold himself in place, hold himself in the body.

“Okay, you’re okay,” Chloe says desperately, not able to hear her own words, not able to know truly what they sound like, but the worry laces her throat like acid. “What happened, talk to me, please.”

He coughs, a wet sound. “I got us out,” he says, unsteady. “We’re out, we need to—” he cuts himself off with another gasp, raspy down his throat, and squeezes his eyes shut again.

Chloe tries to click her fingernails, tries to hear anything, but can’t, then takes another steadying breath, fully sitting up and glancing around.

Chloe was born in the American Prairies, lived her life in Kansas before getting picked up by the college, and the unending grasslands never ceased to dizzy her by their sheer scope.

Whoever he dumped them, it’s remote. She can’t even see a road, can’t see a barn, can’t see any livestock or tractors.

Not someplace she can walk them out of, and the seat of her jeans are getting damp.

Still prone on the ground, Killian coughs, and Chloe evaluates.

It’s sunny, sometime midday, and warmer than the Washington mountains, where they were just past noon. She can’t smell manure, just the healthy deep smell of damp earth and crushed grass, so they’re not somewhere close to a farm, close to somewhere they can beg for help.

The battery is still clutched in her hand, the handkerchief around her neck, and other than the strident lack of sound, nothing hurts. Nothing’s injured, no aches, no bruises beyond what’s leftover.

And her backpack…

Chloe twists in the mud, but there’s no glimmer of bright orange nylon. No familiar straps, no telltale jingle of a zipper, not even a fragment of her scrolls.

Her breath catches in her throat, and Killian lifts his head, blinking blearily.

“The research,” she says, the words falling from her lips. “The research, we have to go…”

“Do you have the compass?” he asks, groggy, and without anything else, he’s almost unbearably loud, but she scrabbles for her pocket until she feels the familiar lump.

Her phone’s gone, too. Dropped somewhere in the strange battle, somewhere in the confrontation.

“We need to get to Seanna,” Killian says, and even his voice sounds like it’s being spoken through a mouthful of meal. “She’s in danger, she’s not safe.”

He squeezes her hand, like he’s about to teleport, but they don’t move from their patch of mud.

Her research.

She gasps, she must’ve but no sound hits her ears, and she blinks back a sudden rush of tears.

It’s almost, almost too much. Killian’s injured, disoriented. She can’t hear, other than things he says, which prickles at her neck. They’re somewhere stuck, somewhere unfamiliar, and her research is gone.

Gone.

She jerks in another breath, then grips Killian’s hand again. She could possibly transform a battery into the phone—it would take hours and there’s no guarantee it’d work—and call for help—text for help—but she can’t go back, not without Killian, and each inhale from him laces with pain.

“Okay,” she says, and she can’t even hear herself in her own mind, “Killian, I can’t hear.”

This jolts him up. “What—”

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