Page 618 of Shadowblood Souls
The younger girl trips and tumbles across the gritty soil. At her yelp, I sway forward and then catch myself.
It isn’t my place to jump in. I’m helping in my own way—the way that doesn’t risk anyone getting more hurt than they already are.
The older girl has already dashed to her sister’s side. “It’s okay. Let’s get a bit of water to wash the scrape.”
I remain frozen until they vanish through the back door. Then I breeze by as stealthily as a spirit, leaving an extra coin in the stack on their window.
I’ve only gone through half of my plunder. Not a bad take, considering how the theft nearly turned into disaster.
But as I pause at the crossroads, a hollow forms in the pit of my stomach. My hand lifts of its own accord to my left arm, where I keep the ivory ribbon tied just above my elbow.
Is anything I do now really enough?
I jerk my fingers to one of my still-full pockets, forcing a grin to chase away my unsettled emotions. I’m accomplishing more than nothing, anyway. I’ve seen the glimmers of happiness a few extra coins can spark.
I head across the street to the next row of houses. As I reach a low fence around a garden, a cry splits the air from farther up the road.
A rough, pained cry cut off an instant later with a gurgle.
My feet stall, my gut twisting. A shriek like that can’t mean anything short of horrific.
But I don’t get involved—not directly. If I try to step in…
I know how much horrorIcan bring about even when I want to do the right thing.
That thought—the thought that’s held me back a thousand times before—crosses my mind, and my gaze snags on the trickle of liquid seeping over the dirt road from an alleyway. The fading sun lights it crimson.
Blood.
My feet move without consulting the rest of me. I sprint toward the alley even as both my head and my heart tangle up with indecision.
I’m not supposed to intervene. Not like this—not when my control might slip?—
There has to besomethingI can do with just my hands and the skills I’ve learned. I know how to stop bleeding, how to bind a wound. I?—
I throw myself into the alley and skid to a halt just before I smack into the body slumped there.
It’s a woman, glossy chestnut hair scattered around her pale, blood-flecked face. Her dark cloak has fallen away from a violet silk dress that manages to shimmer even amid the grime of the alley. Gold glints at her wrist.
Someone like her doesn’t belonghere. She?—
She’s bleeding out from a gash where a knife’s stabbed into the side of her neck.
Snapping out of my shock, I drop to my knees and press my fingers to the wound around the blade. Yanking the knife out will only make the blood flow faster.
Not that it’s flowing at all slowly as it is.
The woman’s eyelids flutter. She’s still alive, however many fleeting seconds she has left. Her life is gushing away in a pulsing torrent beneath my useless hands.
My magic resonates through my limbs, prickling into my bones. My posture stiffens against it.
No. The power inside me can’t save a life.
I knowthatbetter than I know anything in my whole damned existence.
The noblewoman’s lips part, but nothing comes out except another sputter of blood. Gods above, she doesn’t look any older than my twenty years.
My gaze locks with hers beneath her twitching eyelids. She stares back at me with desperate intensity.
