Page 162 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

“Good,” Killian answers, his words like a vow. “Good.”

Full of the sort of fury that wants to wreck things, the fury that wants things to crumble, to burn, to destroy, Chloe whirls towards the next cage, snaps it open and stalks on.

One after another, the animals either cringe back, nose their way through the metal, or burst out and sprint away. A dog—she thinks it’s a dog—snaps at her, a vicious slash already across its muzzle, but she’s already back and out of reach by the time the door swings open.

On the other side of the room, she’s dimly aware of Killian opening cages with a flick of his power, three at a time.

He doesn’t like cages either.

“Seanna would be crying,” Killian murmurs, almost too quiet for her to hear over the slowly increasing volume of animals running, of animals shaking deeper into cages. “She loves cats.”

It’s a small, beautiful detail about his adopted daughter, a sort of offering that can’t quite lesson the ugliness of the room.

“Then Chance will love her,” Chloe says, and he shoots a glance back at her. “He loves everyone that will love him back.”

The pounding in her head grows the further she strides inside the room, the closer they might be getting to the spirit fox, the more animals they release. The more animals that have been scarred by magic—and a few by knives—the stronger her dread.

She doesn’t know if the spirit fox could be scarred, and her stomach turns at even the thought.

Until they walk in front of the last row of cages, and the very last one is…empty.

And the compass points directly at it.

Chloe’s breath punches out of her, shakes the compass, but it quickly resettles back to pointing at it, the needle barely wobbling.

“We’re too late,” she says, the words wrenched from her. “We’re too late, she’s gone.”

Killian reaches for her, and she almost lets him touch her, but she flinches forward, grasping at the bars of the cage.

They spark out at her, flickering with energy, nestling against her skin, as her fingertips close on the cage.

They don’t have her research. They don’t have her years of careful building. They don’t have any way of tying back to her friend, of tracking.

All they have is the compass, and her skin is cold as she numbly lifts a spark of the magic onto the metal casing.

“Chloe,” Killian’s saying behind her, barely audible over the ringing in her ears. “Chloe.”

The spark flickers wildly in the compass, like she took it directly from the spirit fox herself.

It’s never been this vibrant, and the compass spins, bobbing, unable to settle on one direction. Instead, it whirls, almost as crazed as Chloe feels, as the terror welling up and the horror that she got this close and still—

“Chloe,” Killian repeats, and she stares up wildly at him, the edges of her vision blurring in. “Chloe, wait—”

Before she can comprehend, before she can unclench her fingers from the cage fully, he yanks her away, ripping it out of her grip.

She gasps, the air torn from her, but he swings her around and back, skidding her behind him.

She can barely understand, barely see, as he sticks an arm out towards the back wall, the line of his shoulder strong and…

Blasts.

Chloe reels back, but he keeps a hand on her wrist behind him as brick shards rain around them, shielding her from the worst of the debris.

A touch, a breath, his overwhelming power flooding out in the room, Chloe’s ears popping, and the wall between them and the next is gone.

Gone.

Shattered like ice, light streaming in, scattering the animals behind them into a rush of motion, the silencing spell broke to a riot of barks and growls, of hisses and screeches, of scrabbling paws and sprinting claws against the tile.

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