Page 583 of Shadowblood Souls
He swipes his hand through the air to dismiss my concerns. “I only want to talk to Nadia. Nadia, where are you? Please. I love you. You know that, right?”
A lump rises in my throat—and Nadia’s statuesque frame sways into view through the grappling bodies. Her pixie cut sticks up in tufts between strands slicked to her scalp with sweat or maybe blood. Her eyes look wild, the pupils over-dilated.
She stares at Booker. “You’re here.”
He nods, a gentle smile spreading across his face that’s totally at odds with our surroundings. “I’ll always be here. I miss you. If we could just?—”
Something hisses through the air. Booker’s plea is cut off in mid-sentence with a bloom of red in the middle of his throat.
A bloom of blood around a glint of metal. Someone’s shot him with one of those crossbow bolts.
Booker staggers and coughs. More blood sputters up over his lips to dribble down his chin.
With a cry, I dash over to him. My call for help vibrates up my throat as forceful as any scream. “Dominic! Anyone—we need a healer!”
Nadia gets to Booker first. He collapses into her arms, his jaw working but no more sound than a ragged gasp escaping his mouth. More blood spurts across her dark gray sweater.
“No,” she mumbles. “No, no—Booker, no.”
His head slumps forward. His eyes glaze. Nadia’s fingers clutch at his back, but when his legs give, she has to sink with him to the ground.
I come to a halt over them, not knowing what else to do. He’s gone. I’m not sure even Dominic could save him if he got here now.
Anguish for both the boy I couldn’t save and the girl grieving him clogs my lungs. For a few seconds, I can’t breathe.
Nadia strokes her fingers over Booker’s cheek with a choked wail. She stares at the blood that’s still pulsing from his throat to soak into her clothes.
Then her gaze jerks up toward me.
Fury hardens her features. She lurches upright, her lips pulling back from her teeth to bare them.
“You brought him here! You got him killed! You don’t care about any of us!”
My jaw goes slack. I don’t know what to say in the face of her rage. Can’t she see that it was one of her allies’ bullets that killed him?
But Booker couldn’t have taken that bullet if he hadn’t come here with us. If we hadn’t been trying to stop her and the other rogue shadowbloods.
“I—I’m sorry,” I stammer out. “Nadia, I swear, I only want to help you. I?—”
She lets out a scream that’s pure agony and flings out her hands. Light so sharp it gives off tangible heat blazes out in all directions, not just from her palms but every inch of her skin.
She’s close enough that her fingers slash across my cheek. In the instant before I flinch backward, my skin sears with a physical burn.
“No!” she screeches. “You’re all the same. You’re all against us. You fucked us up and you screwed us over and you should all fucking die!”
I’m not sure who all she’s talking to right now. From the groans and yelps around me, she’s hurting her fellow shadowbloods as much as the rest of us.
But she definitely means me. Girding myself, I reach for her again, but she whips her hand straight toward my face.
An even sharper spear of light spikes straight through my eyeballs. My forehead and cheeks sting with the sensation of scorching. The pain echoes the agony that laced her voice, shooting straight into my brain with the fizzling of my vision.
The pit of my stomach hollows out. In every way that matters, I think my friend might be gone too.
Then a heavier force rams into the back of my head, and the blazing light gives way to total darkness.
Twenty-Five
Riva
