Page 116 of What did you do?

“No!”

One of the last guards below had shot me in the stomach when we weren’t paying attention.

Urgent hands lifted me.

“No! Cal!” Eli’s panic skittered through his tight grip.

I had fallen from the edge of the platform and onto the ledge below. Eli pulled me against his chest. His heart was thrumming…too fast.

“Calypso Petranova, please, please don’t leave me.”

Eli’s heavy breathing feathered across my forehead.

“Walter!”

My head fell to the side, and I fought to open my eyes.

Growls and snarls filled the silence as I took in the crowd. The animals were overpowering the guards easily now. But the clink of cannons made my body tense.

The guards struggled and panicked for a few more seconds before taking off into the crowd. The cannons wouldn’t fire, and they were significantly outnumbered.

I choked suddenly.

Large hands grabbed my shoulders, trying to stop the sharp, jerking movements as I struggled to get down and walk on my own.

“It’s okay… It’s okay.” Walter’s comforting face moved in front of mine.

“She’s been hit pretty good.” Eli trembled.

“Do you have your powers?” Walter asked.

“No, and she—wewill be dead in a few hours if we cannot get her heart now. It’s too much for her little bit of heart. We have to get it now.” Eli’s voice cracked.

“What happened to your powers?” I rasped, fighting to hold my head up. I just needed to get my breath and I would be fine. Men were always babies about getting hurt.

I felt the cold air push back the hair from my forehead. The smell of clean, fresh soap and sunshine hovered in my nose. Eli readjusted my weight, pulling me tighter against his chest.

“We need a new plan. We have tried athousandtimes to free her heart. The castle is under siege right now. You have no powers and are dying right alongside her.” Walter’s angry voice seemed like it rattled against the mountains.

“But she needs it! She needs me.” Eli’s voice quivered. “She needs me, and I will never ever let her down again.”

My chest seized painfully, but I think it might have even had my heart been whole.

Warm drops fell on the clammy skin of my face, and for a moment, they felt like sunshine peeking through gray clouds, but they weren’t rain; Eli was crying.

“You have become an unlikely friend, Aurelius—Eli. I cannot let you, Seelie or not, get caught in the battle between the Seeliecrown and the Fallen. Tarani is forgiven because she works with them. If you enter that castle, you will not make it out.” Walter’s voice softened.

“I am the crown. There is no amount of friendship that could erase the dangers placed on my head now, but the castle is my home, and the real war is between my mother and sister. My mother will be placed in the castle’s oubliette, and Tarani will take the Unseelie throne.” Eli let out a shaky breath. “In truth, even with my sudden lack of powers, it’s still safer for me to go than anybody else.”

“Take this, then,” Walter said with a grunt, ripping Mendax’s tooth necklace from his neck with a smile and handing it to Eli. “Mendax would want to have been a part of your death.”

“Ha-ha,” Eli said, palming my tooth.

“Put me down. What happened to your powers, Eli?” I murmured as I tried to find my voice.

“No. I like carrying you, and you’d never let me if you weren’t too weak to fight me,” Eli said as the three of us continued down the mountainside. “Just don’t get all wild looking like you did back there with the commander, and as for my powers, with the wound to your stomach and only half a heart, you are dying, which means that we are dying, and what little power I have left is keeping us alive with our tie.”

Walter’s warm brown eyes snagged mine, and for the first time, I realized how much I had come to love and trust him since meeting him as Brown Rat in the Unseelie dungeon. His proud, dancing eyes felt like balm to my soul right now. In some weird, unconventional way, Mendax, Eli, and Walter had all become family—a home to me that wasn’t bricks and beams.

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