Page 95 of Merciless Prince
Pitiful moans were bubbling up in her throat, and her lips had turned blue. “Killian…”
I yanked her out, dusting clumps of snow off her with one hand as my other arm wrapped around her waist to keep her stable. “It’s okay,” I muttered. “I’ve got you.”
My rage had faded, replaced by an ache in the center of my chest. The more Shay moaned and shivered in my arms, the worse the pain got.
“Can you stand up on your own?” I asked once I’d wiped most of the snowflakes off her.
She nodded and wrapped her arms around herself, body wracked with violent shivers. I let go of her, peeled my jacket off, and put it over her shoulders. “Here. Wear this,” I said. “Can you walk?”
She nodded and tried to take a step, but her knees buckled right away. “It’s okay,” I said gruffly, capturing her in my arms. “I’ve got you.”
It was the second time I’d spoken those exact words to her in less than a minute, but it didn’t seem strange to me. It felt right.
I picked her up and held her like a doll, letting her cling to me as I trudged toward the car. When we reached it, I put her in the front and leaned over to turn the heat on.
“I’ll just be a minute, okay?” I said, pulling my jacket around her body even tighter.
She nodded and sniffed, tears brimming in her eyes.
I closed the door and walked back over to Derrick. He was lying on his side now, shuddering and groaning as he held his broken nose. “Help me up, Kill,” he grunted. “Get me inside.”
“No fucking way.”
“Please,” he choked out, wincing as he tried to sit up. “I need to get home.”
I stared at him impassively. “Remember all those drunk girls you claimed you were going to help?” I said. “Did they get home safely?”
He coughed, spraying a fine mist of blood all over the snow around him. “Killian, I’m literally begging you,” he muttered. “Help me.”
I cocked my head. “What about Shay? When she begged you to stop what you were doing to her, did you listen?”
“I… I’m sorry, okay? I’ll go and see a therapist or something. I promise.” He weakly got up on one arm, balancing on his elbow. “Just give me a ride back to the city.Please.”
“How about this? I’ll give you the same courtesy you gave Shay and all the other girls,” I said. I smiled thinly and kicked him right into the pit, relishing the sound of his groans as his body cracked against the frozen ground. “Maybe now you’ll finally know what it was like for them. How helpless you made them feel.”
With that, I turned and strode away, leaving him alone in the ditch.
When I made it back to the car, Shay’s lips had turned pink again, and she wasn’t violently shivering anymore. She was still clinging to my jacket like it was a lifeline, though, arms tightly wrapped around herself as if she were afraid I’d take it away from her.
I started the car and steered it down the long driveway. Before I turned back onto the main road at the end, I stopped and looked at Shay again. “I should’ve believed you about Derrick,” I said softly.
She sniffed and murmured something under her breath, too quietly for me to hear.
I didn’t push her to repeat herself. Instead I cleared my throat, put my hand on her shoulder, and gave it a gentle squeeze. “I’m sorry.”
Something flickered in her eyes, but it was gone before I could figure out what it was. She bit down hard on her bottom lip, like she was trying to stop herself from saying something. Then she leaned her damp head back on the seat and closed her eyes, going somewhere in her mind.
Somewhere I couldn’t follow.
28
Shay
The last forty-eighthours had been utterly bizarre.
Killian was beingnice. It was such a foreign concept to me that he might as well have swooped in on a dragon’s back and admitted he was actually part of an alien race from Kepler-22B.
After he drove me back to the castle, he lavished me with gifts of hot food, new clothes, books, magazines, a TV—anything to keep me warm, well-fed, and entertained. He checked on me every few hours, always speaking softly as if he were afraid my bones were made of fragile glass that would shatter at a high frequency. He even removed the horrible cross from the corner of the room so I wouldn’t have to look at it anymore.
