Page 93 of The Blood we Crave: Part Two

My fingers graze her cheek, and it’s like flipping on a light switch. She blinks, her bleary eyes moving until they find my own. I let her stare, let her see that I’m here and this is real.

“There she is,” I praise, a small smile tugging at the edge of my lips. “Welcome back to the land of the living, darling.” My hand tucks into the crook of her neck, letting her fall into it. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

She’s dead weight in my grip when my other arm scoops beneath her, picking up her body until I’m cradling her against my chest. I let myself be something she can lean against, a feeling she can trust. Her rigid, stiff body drops into me. If it wasn’t for her eyes, I’d think she was dead.

I shield her from the scene in the kitchen, walking through the rest of the house, counting the slight rise and fall of her chest. We quietly make our way up the steps, winding down the hallway and into her bathroom.

I’d promised myself a long time ago that I was finished cleaning up other people’s messes.

Yet, I stand in her bathroom for hours and bathe her. I scrub her body with strokes so gentle I barely recognize my own hands. TheTI’d carved into her skin is red, in the early stages of healing, and she wears it like a dream. I wash her hair until the water runs clear. I dry her off and dress her, all in total silence, until I realize…

I was done cleaning up after everyone except Lyra.

She is the exception in every capacity.

Everything I knew myself to be does not apply to who I am with her.

Lyra can barely sit up in the bed as I brush her hair, and when I finish, she collapses onto the sheets, burying her face into the pillow as exhaustion finally overtakes her mind.

Her worries about me forgetting who I am with her are void. Not when I know that I’ll always come back to her. That the me I was always meant to become is who I am with her.

We are two halves of a broken hole. Two mangled people trying to find solace in all the darkness we’d been given. For years, I wished I’d never met her. That the night we met could be erased and forgotten.

But now, all that matters is the girl inside the closet and the woman who came out of it alive. I wish I could’ve done more to save her mother, if only so I could thank her.

For creating the only person on Earth I can’t bear to live without.

I wish I would’ve stopped my father, if only so I could tell Phoebe Abbott that her daughter would never be alone again. That no matter what end we meet, she will always have me.

In life and in death.

“Do-Don’t—” she mutters in her slumber.

I look down at her, relinquishing everything I am to the tiny, murderous woman in this bed.

Painfully, wholly hers.

And even though I don’t know what she wants to say, I still reply, “I won’t.”

The fire sizzles in the night, burning high and cracking as it chars what remains of Conner Godfrey.

Leaving Lyra to rest was for the best, and even though I’m just outside, I hate the idea of her waking up and me not being there. However, there was a ridiculous amount of cleanup that had to be done.

No one can ever accuse her of being gentle again.

We’d dragged the body outside and worked together on trying to clean the house. The bad news is I have to tell Lyra that her moment of blackout rage is going to result in us redoing her entire kitchen.

The good news is I have a feeling we’ll be leaving her cabin in the woods and moving to the estate soon.

“The Halo has been around since Stephen’s great-fucking-grandfather,” Alistair shouts from my left, standing next to the open flame, flipping through the pages of Godfrey’s left-behind journal. “The Sinclairs started it to, and I quote, ‘exact revenge on the daughters and sisters of the founding families.’ They built their fortune from this shit.”

I’ve been up for nearly twenty-seven hours, and I’ve yet to feel tired once. Until now, as my adrenaline plummets and the weight of today settles into reality.

Another body to bury, another secret to carry.

“All those innocent girls because of jealousy? Sounds like bitch is a trait all Sinclairs are born with,” Rook grumbles from the lawn chair directly across me, the burning wood separating us.

A blunt dangles from his lips, his hoodie pulled down over his eyes. The fatigue is tangible—we all feel it. Maybe because it’s been so long since we’ve felt like we could actually rest.

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