Page 82 of Wicked Exile

Dropping to his knees, Evan knelt over the body, his shoulders curling over, his head burying into his hands.

Gilroy dead.

The last of her strength gone, Juliet collapsed onto the stone floor, her temple balanced on the back of her hand as she watched Evan’s shoulders shake.

He would hate her now. His brother dead because of her.

Hell, he already hated her.

She’d betrayed him. Left him.

Anything she’d told herself differently in the last days had been desperate lies in an attempt to keep her sanity.

His instant grief at Gilroy’s death proved that fact.

He hated her.

It was time to give up.

{ Chapter 31 }

“Hold on, stay with me, Juliet. Stay with me.” His voice cracked, desperate, unrecognizable to his own ears as he'd grabbed her face. Couldn't wake her. “Hell, don’t leave me now. Stay with me.” Evan’s mind couldn’t pull away from the terror that had seized him hours ago, his own words still echoing in his ears.

His feet shifted, impatient, in the hallway of his Edinburgh townhouse as he leaned against the wall. But his eyes stayed closed, his thoughts refusing to shift to the present, his face wincing as the clank of his blade hitting link after link in the chain that locked Juliet to the stone floor still rang in his ears. She’d been slipping away. Away. Her breath shallow. Her eyes not opening to him. There, the weak link. His body straining, muscles popping as he’d wedged the link open, freeing her.

“My lord?” Dr. Langtree’s voice echoed into the hallway.

Evan’s eyes popped open and he pushed himself away from the wall. His arms clasped across his chest throbbed for how tight they’d been wrapped together. He shook his arms at his sides and looked to the physician, moving as much into the present as the horror that had just terrorized his mind allowed. “What took you so long?”

“Clothes. It’s the middle of the night.”

A clunk followed by a crash and glass shattering came from the other side of the door next to Evan.

Shit.

Evan’s look left the physician and he charged into the room, his eyes not adjusting to the dark quickly enough.

Empty bed. There. In the sliver of light from the hallway, the broken side table and shattered glass, and in the middle of it, a heaping mess of body and limbs. Blast.

Glass crunching underfoot, Evan rushed over to the curled-up form of Juliet and picked her straight up off the floor as delicately as he could so broken glass wouldn’t embed into her skin.

“Juliet—what happened?” He set her bottom onto the bed, stretching her legs out from their tight bend.

Her eyes opened wide and she found his face, her withered lips cracking open. “Alone…dark…” The words barely squeaked out of her throat, the sound strangled to near nothing. “I thought…”

“You thought ye were still in that prison of a room?”

She nodded, her body sagging against his hold on her back.

Rage tore at his throat, threatening to send a growl into the room. But no.

She didn’t need growls. She needed a thousand other things in this moment.

Not his rage. Not the idiotic words that always came out of his damn mouth.

He cleared his throat, gently settling her body long onto the bed. “You’re not in there anymore—I haven’t had time to make a fire. I was getting the physician. He’s here now and needs to look at you. But first, where is Ness? Is she in danger? Did Gil find the both of you?”

Her head flopped back and forth, her words a whisper that cut in and out. “No, no, Ness is safe.”

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