Page 217 of Between Despair and Hope

“What?” I groaned, attempting to stand. Bent over with her hand firmly in my hair made it difficult. I reached for my dagger but was instead met with an empty thigh, the belt I wore having ripped with my pants.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she muttered. “He’s going to kill me.”

“Nor, let her the fuck go!” Dewalt shouted as his footsteps thundered closer.

Though she held me in her grasp, clearly with the intention to take me to Declan, a part of me felt bad when I drew the tiniest flame—the best I could muster—and I placed my palm on her leg. I thought of her other burns, knowing what had been done to her at her father’s hand and what he clearly was making her do, as I twisted away when she dropped my hair. She screeched, reaching for the burnt skin, and I forcibly shoved her away from me.

“Hands on your head and don’t move,” Dewalt barked at the woman, and she listened, panic and regret flooding her features. “What is this?” he said, voice softening as he stepped closer to her. “Gods, I was fucking right all along?” He shifted uncomfortably, and I wondered just how far things had gone between the two of them.

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed, looking at him with pleading eyes.

Confident he had the matter in hand, I started back for the stable to heal Theo. Though I didn’t want to use my divinity until I got to him, the obsidian fragments still tempering it far too much, I worried he might already be dead. But I spotted movement out of the corner of my eye, and I turned to face the dormitory, not understanding what I saw.

A person was crawling down the back steps of the porch, and I heard a muffled scream from behind the gag she wore as panicked hazel eyes met mine and she tumbled down the stairs.

Nor.

I whipped around to scream to Dewalt, to warn him, to stop what was about to happen, but I was too late.

He’d let her put her arms down, wasn’t treating her as a threat as he questioned her, so when she reached behind her to pull my dagger from her waistband, he wasn’t prepared. He told her to stop, relying on the coercion he no longer had access to. My scream echoed through the clearing as I ran toward them and Dewalt fell to his knees, my dagger embedded firmly in his chest. She used her foot on him as leverage to pull the dagger free, turning to brandish it toward me as he collapsed.

“You have to come with me,” she bellowed.

I wasn’t thinking, my instincts and training from the man who lay dying beside me rushing in. Heart racing, everything else fell to the wayside—my throbbing head, the tiny pricks of pain from the obsidian. All of it. Kicking her hand, my dagger flew free, and she cursed.

She dove toward me, but I jumped back, causing her to stumble. And in that moment of weakness, I struck, grabbing her by the forearm and twisting.

“Fuck!” she screamed as she curved the rest of her arm to ease the pain.

“Who the fuck are you?” I screamed as I kicked behind her knee, and she fell to the ground. Shifted to look like Nor, it had to be a dynamic shifter. My head was aching, and I grew dizzy as I pushed her down. I didn’t dare waste any of my divinity though, knowing I would be lucky to use it to keep death away from either of the two men who lay bleeding out. Face flattened to the earth, I dug my knee between her shoulder blades to keep her from moving even though she beat and scratched at me the best she could. Her movements grew lethargic, and she stopped fighting me.

“Just kill me already,” she cried, and I grabbed her hair at the nape of her neck just as it changed color, turning her to the side so I could see her face. “He’s going to kill me either way,” she panted. I watched as her hair turned from Nor’s dark brown waves to Aerfen’s plain brown hair and once more to shorter auburn hair, and that was when I realized.

“You’re the fucking shifter. From Darkhold,” I spat. “I watched him kill you.”

“No, but Declan made me wish he had.”

Dewalt groaned, and I glanced over at my friend. He had the wherewithal to put a hand to the wound, doing his best to stop the bleeding. But I could already tell he was growing weaker, and it wouldn’t be enough. The real Nor stumbled over, carrying Dewalt’s sword in bound hands as tears ran down her face. She handed it to me, and I took it, unsure of what I wanted to do with it.

“Put pressure on his chest,” I directed Nor, and I stood, pressing my foot to the center of the shifter’s back as I rose.

“It wasn’t you,” Dewalt mumbled, voice trailing off as Nor knelt beside him.

“I’m sorry,” the shifter begged, body writhing. “He made me do it!”

“May the gods forgive you then,” I said, as I plunged the blade through the back of her neck.

Chapter 59

Elora

Iwatchedinhorroras Cyran fell from the sky. He lurched forward, plummeting face-first toward his death. There was nothing anyone could do as a silent scream ripped from his lips. Time slowed down while he fell, and I couldn’t look away. Moments of soft silence came back to me, tender quiet in one another’s company. I’d had a lot of time to think about what Cyran meant to me, and what I stood to lose if I never let him back into my life. My heart had dropped the moment he said he was leaving, and I had planned to do everything in my power to get him to stay. And then hell had broken loose.

What if I never got to speak to him again?

Cy wasn’t what I thought I could have ever wanted. He was soft behind his sarcasm, quite unlike the heroes in my stories. He could barely wield a sword because he’d never been taught. I didn’t think he’d done a moment of manual labor in his life. And he demanded nothing of me. He’d always tried to make the best of the situation when I was in Evenmoor, and he’d looked out for the good of the world by doing what he did to me. Cyran was good, despite all the things which should have made him evil. Even if he’d done something tremendously bad to me, I didn’t want him to be alone. Perhaps it was naive to think that way. But now, as I watched him dropping to the ground, I wished I’d been kinder to him and allowed his good intentions to count for more when it came to my forgiveness.

Even as he continued to fall, Rainier’s shout pulled my attention away from the plummeting prince to the two men scuffling on the ground. Had my scream caused this? Had it distracted Rainier enough that Declan could take him by surprise? Was it my fault?

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