Page 41 of The Princesses of Ruin
The urge to scoff and tell him all the ways he’s wrong forces its way through my mind to my mouth and I bite it back, swallowing until the lump in my throat turns to tears.
“My monster,” Zane whispers, coming to my side.
I blink, trying to push down the need to cry, but it’s coming. I’m so tired. I’m so weak.
So weak. Give in.
I take a shaky breath. “More shield.”
Zane reaches into his bag and pulls out Alyse’s vial. I take a small sip and begin weaving the web of golden light that holds her out in my mind. After a few moments, or maybe a hundred, there’s an impenetrable wall, and I feel nothing at all.
“Better?” Zane askes.
I open my eye and nod. “Better.”
“We don’t have as much of this as I’d like,” he says, inspecting the vial.
“If we hurry, it won’t matter.”
Nothing matters but her death.
Zane’s gaze zips from my lips to my empty socket to my eye. “Why?”
“Because we will see Alyse again sooner,” I say, turning back to Winifred. I grab my bag and relieve her of the saddle and reins. “Run home now, you brilliant bitch.”
She whinnies in a high tone that sounds like laughter.
Fear of pain.
Mate is dying.
My mate.
The air is sucked from my lungs as I feel terror like never before.
No safe way home.
Mate is dying.
Fear of pain.
Must fight. Must win.
“Scarlett?” Zane grips my shoulder and I come back to my body, several steps farther into the forest.
Can’t die. Must fight. My mate needs me.
Our baby needs me.
The desperate cry pulls me into the mind of the panicking creature. I can see through its eyes. All eight of them.
Hope saturates my being, and purpose is breathed back into my lungs.
I look at Zane.
“We’re needed in the forest, my love.”
Chapter fifteen
