Page 425 of Shadowblood Souls
Zian is struggling to help Sully at his other side, but I already know even his thick hands can’t seal these wounds. Sully sways on his feet, his face blanched, his eyes wide.
“I—I—” he mumbles, and his voice breaks with a desperate sob.
The other shadowbloods have closed in around him, the shadowkind man forgotten. “Put him down!” Jacob yells. “Maybe—maybe that’ll slow the bleeding.”
“Tear his shirt,” Andreas says in a quieter but equally fraught voice. “If there’s any way to bandage them…”
Zian tears at the fabric. Jacob kneels by us, his face hardening with concentration.
The flesh beneath my hands clamps together, but blood and smoke still seep from along Sully’s wrist beneath the manacle. Jacob narrows his eyes, but his strained exhalation shows how much effort it’s taking to work his talent that precisely.
His voice comes out with a rasp. “I can’t hold both at the same time—can’t concentrate like that…”
I glance around frantically through the haze of essence, and my gaze snags on a familiar figure watching us from the house. I hadn’t noticed Toni coming out.
“Please!” I shout at her. “Don’t let Balthazar do this. Sully didn’t do anything wrong. He was just—he was justhere.”
“You were told not to approach that man,” Toni says in a rigid voice. “I hope you won’t need another warning.”
I stare at her. “He’s just akid. You can’t really think this is okay.”
Apparently she does. She simply turns away without another word.
And something snaps inside me.
Fury sears through me, sharp and prickling, rattling my lungs. Stoking a fresh scream into the base of my throat.
The shadowkind man wouldn’t help us. None of the human beings here will either.
They’ve all turned their backs on us. They don’t give a shit what Balthazar does to us.
There isn’t a single person out there we can turn to except ourselves.
My throat resonates with the rising anger. I think I’d have shrieked it all out at Toni, shattered her from feet to head in the most painful way possible, if Sully hadn’t lurched toward me right then.
We’ve lowered him partly to the ground, but he’s managed to roll. My gaze jerks back to him as he squirms next to me.
“Help,” he mumbles. “Help. Help.”
I can see it’s already too late. Blood drenches his clothes and the grass beneath him. His voice is faltering with every iteration of his plea.
And it’s all Balthazar’s fault. Him and every person who’s let him continue his reign.
The rage blares on inside me, burning away all my hopelessness and fear.
I won’t be one of those people. I’ve destroyed everyone who tried to cage and torture us before.
I will not rest until I’ve shredded every organ in that psychopath’s body and ended this madness once and for all.
Ten
Jacob
Matteo adjusts the target with a press of a button behind the transparent wall of his booth. The ringed circle mounted on its wooden board shifts to the left and rotates several degrees.
“All right,” he says in his obnoxiously pedantic voice. “Let’s see what kind of impact you can achieve with that.”
I grit my teeth and flex my forearm against the arm of the chair, focusing on my awareness of the spines I can form beneath my skin. A prickle runs through my nerves all the way up to my shoulder.
