Page 69 of Reflections of Silence

“I love you, too.” Sebastian wheezed at my feet, lumbering to his knees.

That seemed to be as far as he could go for the moment, but for me, it was more than enough. I flung myself at him, rocking us both back almost to the pebbles scattered with blood and smoke.

“She killed you!” I might have screamed the words at him in my head and aloud at the same time. He winced, but I didn’t care. “I watched you fall. You weren't breathing.” Tears tracked down my face, heating on my skin from the flames that devoured the house behind us.

“I don’t breathe, Gella.” His expression lightened with a crooked smile. “It’s hard to kill someone that’s already dead.”

I nodded, sobbing and choking the unused grief that bubbled over as my fear dissipated. “It’s done?’ I gasped. “She’s gone?” I tried to turn around, but Sebastian held me tight.

“No, don’t look,” he murmured. “It’s done. You’re free.”

I peered up at him. “And you?”Are we still safe, together?

Sebastian smiled.Always, Gella.

The last of the guests ran screaming down the hill as I huddled into his chest.

“Well, that’s a whole new problem,” Sebastian sighed. “Which continent would you like to try next? Dolion?”

The stone man didn’t answer, and in one brief moment of clarity, I knew I had used my grief too early.

I cried out for the stone man, but he said nothing as I stumbled through smoke, tripping over the bodies of wolves, though I never spotted Granny Smythe amongst them.

“This will require quite the cleanup.” Charleton appeared at my side.

He rolled bodies, checking each for signs of life as I made my way through the knot of horror Amy’s darkness had brought upon us. Turning in circles, I still couldn’t find the stone man.

Would he have gone back in, to check the rooms?

Being stone, I doubted fire could hurt him any more than the blade Amy tossed his way. Perhaps it had hurt him and he lay somewhere, dying. The thought of more loss broke my heart, and my tears ran fresh through the gore that covered my face.

“Dolion?” I stumbled over something solid, something warm, but wrong.

Dolion. It had to be.

Sebastian. Help me.

I felt around him, trying to lift him, but instead of a velvet suit, my hands tangled in lace, sank into a mass of ringlets, turned dark with ash and blood.

Not Minette. Anyone but her.

My friend.

“My God,” I choked. My heart swelled in my chest, obliterating the scream that lodged higher up. “No?—”

I told you not to swear.

“Sebastian, help me!” I whispered into her hair, tears streaming down my face.

You faced vampires and wolves and witches with me.

You met a stone man, and I think you fell in love even if you never told me.

I slid shaking hands beneath the figure below me and tried to lift her thin frame, her face waxy and covered in a hundred cuts from what she suffered to free us. Everything seemed so heavy.She slipped from my frozen hands, rolling on the gravel, listless. Lifeless. I flailed and hit something hard, tears and smoke obscuring my vision.

“I have her.” Dolion’s disembodied voice was muted in the hazy smoke.

Hands gripped me as I dropped to my knees, the little of the world I could see titling crazily about me.

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