Page 195 of Phantom Mine

The bottom of my stomach falls out and a fear unlike anything I’ve never known surges through me.

I’m frozen.

Matteo covers my head with both his arms and shoves me down, forcing me to curl into myself behind the wide expanse of his chest.

I feel the heat of the fireball around us as it hits his back.The smell of burning flesh rises into the air and punches straight into the back of my throat.

I angle my neck back and look up at Matteo in horror. His face is twisted in pain. His teeth dig into his lower lip, his eyes screwed shut and his breathing absent. A strangled, garbled groan rips from the depths of his throat. The fireball rescinds as quickly as it appeared and Matteo sags forwards. He gasps out a breath as his body falls into me.

I straighten and catch him by the chest. “Matteo!”

His forehead is pressed into his forearm against the wall just above my shoulder. He traps me beneath him.

“Are you hurt,cara?” he asks, his voice a guttural grunt.

“You’rehurt!” I exclaim. “How’s your back? Show me.” I try to weave under his arm to twist around his body and take a look, but he lowers it and blocks my passage.

“Later,” he croaks, intransigent. “We need to keep moving.”

“But—”

Matteo reaches for my face. He clasps it softly, running a gentle thumb right underneath the cut on my cheekbone. “We’ll take care of your wounds when we’re out of here, and then we’ll look at mine.”

He’s pale as he says the words, his hand clammy against my skin. His pulse is threadbare beneath my palm.

My gut twists in worry.

“You’re hurt.” A hacking cough attacks my lungs. “I can tell you are. We need—”

“We need to get out of here,” he croaks, looking ahead.

I follow his gaze and find a fresh nightmare ahead of us. The flames have consumed the entire left side of the hallway and moved to the ceiling. The wooden beams glow from the inside out like embers, illuminated by the inferno that consumes it from within.

Fear barrels through my bones, my organs, my blood. It destroys everything in its path.

Matteo takes a step forward but stumbles to one knee, revealing his bare back to me.

A violent rush of nausea shoots into my throat.

The entire left side of his back is covered in red, angry welts. The skin is twisted to begin with because of his scarring, but now it raises and deforms grotesquely.

He’s burned, badly.

A strident wail rises inside me, but I swallow it.

I can’t panic now.

“Here,” I call, injecting calm into my voice and bending forward. I grab him by the arm and hoist him to his feet. He helps, propelling his weight upwards as I lift. “I’ve got you.”

I steal a glance at his face. He grimaces but doesn’t reveal the extent of the pain he undoubtedly feels. He doesn’t want me to realize how badly he’s hurt. He does it to protect me, to keep my focus on getting out.

His strength crushes my heart.

He leans his body into mine as we push forward, our progress slow. Hope explodes in my chest when I see the flames haven’t reached the window yet. If we can make it to the end of the hallway, we can escape through there. I have to believe the firefighters will be ready with some kind of mattress to catch us. I cling to that hope.

Matteo grunts as we advance. A swift glance at his face reveals the ashen pallor of his features. The color leaches out of him with every passing second.

“We’re almost there,” I say encouragingly. “We just need to make it to that window and we’ll be safe.”

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