Page 114 of Baking and Angels

“That’s alright, I will find her,” he answered with conviction, joining her at the window.

She looked back out it, her face lined with grim determination.

To hold herself together, to protect the world from her pain, to protect herself from the world,the understanding whispered inside him.

“Yosef should be here,” she breathed, her diction the only thing that made what she said clear.

Rafferty nodded. “Yes, he should be. Buthe isn’t.”

“Yes, thank you, I’m aware,” she answeredbitterly.

“You know he’s alright, don’t you?” he said, the words falling out of him, realizing they were true only when he said them. “He loves you.”

“Please stop,” Scarlet said, closing her eyes against a fresh wave of pain. “It doesn’t help. It doesn’t help telling me that. That he’s still there, somewhere.” She flicked her hand at the dark window. “That love goes on. That I’ll get over it! None of it helps. None of it changes how soul-crushing this feels right now.” She pressed her fist to her chest. “I’m so tired. I’m so tired of thinking about it, but there is no escaping it. There is nothing that will make it stophurting.”

A long pause filled the space between them.

“You know she’s doing all of this for me.” Scarlet gestured another imperious hand at the hallway behind them, but he understood whatwas meant.

“Helena is hurting, too. She’s doing what she can,” Rafferty said.

“And it is all for nothing because this isn’t going to make a difference. I’m already dead.” Scarlet pressed her fist into her chest. “What gave me life is gone, and now I’m just a walking corpse that has been made… to not die onits own.”

“You will still diesomeday.”

She huffed at the correction. “At least not any time soon. Not of old age and infirmity.”

Which again was not necessarily true, but Rafferty held his tonguethis time.

“Nor can I contemplate ending it myself.” She wiped another tear, this time escaping the other eye. “You are right. It was his gift to me.” A small, fragile smile graced her beautiful lips. “I have never given back one of Yosef’s gifts.”

More small tears bloomed from her eyes, small flickers of love over-washed again with grief.

She looked to Rafferty as she broke into a million pieces right there. He only had to lift his arm, and she tucked into it. She didn’t cry, only breathed in shuddering huffs that reverberated through her entire body. “I wish she would stop,” she said a moment later. “She keeps trying to save me.” She sniffed in a hard, unladylike way. “To save mybusiness.”

“May I say something to you?” Rafferty askedcarefully.

Despite her panged look, she gestured an acquiescence.

“None of this is about you. Helena isn’t even doing thisforyou, she’s doing it for herself. She’s drowning and still swimming around trying to rescue everyone else around her. And none of you, not even me, havenoticed.”

Scarlet flinched under his arm, pulling back to her own island.

Her own orb ofdarkness.

For a second, Rafferty could see it clearly, hugging her pain around herself, protecting herself.

How could I never see it before?he marveled to himself.

Scarlet’s gaze studied him, waiting for him tosay more.

He licked his lips, letting the words pour out of him. “Everyone else’s needs are too great, and she’s giving everything she has to help… well, frankly, everyone. And we’re all standing around whining about how it’s not enough. It’s not what we wanted and it’s all not good enough. So, she tries harder! Do you know that she’s even risked her soul to try to save… her cousin.”

Scarlet’s eyebrows pursed together. “Who?”

Rafferty ran both his hands through his hair, knocking off the black toque he wore in his frustration. “Eleanor. The other real contender down there. She’s Helena’s cousin. She has also, in a fucking twist of irony, made a deal…” He couldn’t say with who. His deal was still in place and the only shield he had to protect Helena.

Scarlet shook her head, her eyes going wide. “A deal? You mean…”

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