Page 125 of Her Psycho Beasts

Connor tries to comfort her. “Baby girl, I know.”

“You don’t know!” she screams, her long black hair a tangled mess. “None of you know!”

Minnie crouches beside them and brushes Sabrina’s hair off her face with a shaking hand. “It’ll hurt forever,” she says, to everyone’s surprise. Sabrina quietens and stares at her, breathing hard. “You just learn to cope with it better.”

Sabrina’s face screws up in anguish and she cries into the night, her pain carried on the wind right into my spirit. Stacey, Raquel, and I huddle around them. Together, we all hold her tightly.

“I can’t do this.” Sabrina’s voice is hoarse now. “I can’t go on living like this. I’m broken. It broke me.”

“Youcansurvive this,” Minnie presses. “I did, and so can you.”

“And we were all there.” I say, trying not to break down. “You helped Minnie, and we got through it together. Let us be here for you.”

No more death. I can’t cope with more death right now.

I feel Scythe behind me, his presence sure and steady as a glacier.“May I touch her?”he asks into my mind.

Turning around to glance at him, I frown.“What?”

“Can I touch your friend?”He blinks slowly, meaningfully, through the dark.“Regina?”

Realisation courses through me. Touching a female other than your regina is not generally permitted for a loyal animus. Scythe is asking me for permission to help Sabrina.

Chapter 63

Aurelia

“Okay,”I say tentatively.

Scythe crouches down, and with a slow hand, reaches past me to where Sabrina’s head is cradled in the crook of Connor’s elbow. My shark strokes her hair with a gentle hand, like a father might to a frightened child.

Sabrina stiffens only for a second before her breathing slows down. I turn to stare at Scythe. A beast who hardly touches anyone else because he hates to do so. But he’s using his power now to help my friend. I feel it coursing through the air like the gentle lapping of an ocean wave upon the shore.

Sabrina’s breathing turns deep and rhythmic in that of sleep and Scythe instructs Connor to carry her to the medical centre. A group of guards have surrounded us by then and unlock the external gate a little way from the anima dorms that will take us there.

The lights are bright and harsh in the emergency bay and I’m thankful Sabrina is sleeping. Lyle instructs the doctors to take her into the mental health room and we all pile in there, refusing to leave her.

It’s a large, airy space with a bed and couch and is full of potted plants and ferns. The walls are painted with a mural ofa forest and the light is warm and soft on the eyes. Connor lays Sabrina down on the bed while the admitting doctor and nurse check her over.

It feels like the entire place is in mourning after that. Everyone feels unwell, exhausted, and dejected. Minnie and I hold each other, while Raquel, Connor and Stacey hold Sabrina between them on the bed.

“She cannot stay here any longer,” Scythe murmurs. “At the academy.”

“No,” Lyle agrees.

“She’s no contact with h-her parents,” Raquel says. “She’s just g-got us.”

That makes me cry all over again. We’ve all lost so much. But…as Savage comes to hug me from the back and I watch Lyle and Scythe talking quietly, we’ve gained a whole lot too.

“She used to be so strong,” Connor whispers into the quiet.

It angers me to hear that, but I can’t quite place why.

To everyone’s surprise, it’s Lyle who speaks, his voice hoarse. “It is not a matter of strength. It is a matter of hope. The darkness blinds us from seeing that hope always exists. She could not see a way out and chose the only path that was in her power. It felt quite logical to her.”

We stand in stunned silence.

“I thought about it once, too,” Connor admits. “When it turned out that I had an anima. I thought I was broken. I thought everyone else would think I was broken too.”

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