Page 153 of A Curse of Hope and Shadows: Part I
“If worst comes to worst,” he told her, voice hard and hoarse. “Youhaveto come back to us, Adeline, do you hear?”
Adeline nodded, because she couldn’t commit anything to words, anything that sounded like there was the remotest possibility of not coming back, or doing anything that could hurt Dimitri.
She wrestled into her coat and fled down the lane, wondering why she needed any barrier from the cold at all. She did not feel it. She didn’t feel anything but an awful, wrenching, burning feeling, like she’d swallowed a saw.
I’m coming, I’m coming, hold on.
The grounds of the estate seemed alight in the distance, burning with fire. Shouts and screams hollowed the night. How long before the village was alerted, before every able-bodied person was swarming the woods with torches and pitchforks?
What if he hurt someone?
Dimitri would never, ever want that. Not the sweet boy who hid his pain to shield his mother.
Am I coming to save you, or kill you in their stead? To be with you as you die?
She slipped her hands into her pockets, where Elliott had stashed their father’s bullets. She prayed she never had to fire it as she loaded it, but she would do it if she had to, to spare him another, more painful death. To save her own life.
Whatever would be left of it after tonight.
She reached the gates of the estate. Most of the noise came from the wilder part, down towards the woodlands, the yelling getting louder. She bolted through the dark, scrambling over lawns and bushes.
“Adeline!” Mrs Minton cried, wild and frantic, hurtling towards her. “Did Thomas—is he all right?”
Adeline had not spared one thought for Thomas, but he hadn’t followed her back. He’d run himself hoarse coming to find her. “Where is he?”
Mrs Minton didn’t need to ask who she meant. “Down by the stream,” she told her. “But Adeline—some men from the village are here, too.”
Adeline hadn’t thought it was possible to feel worse than she already did, but another knife twisted in her gut.
No, no…
It was too much. It was all too much—
A howl sounded in the distance, followed by a scream, a cry, a series of shouts.
Adeline raced towards them, ignoring Mrs Minton’s calls. Ignoring everything but the desperate, burning need to find him.
I will find you, I will find you, I will find you—
And then what?
She burst through the trees on the edge of the estate, scrambling over the undergrowth, towards the stream. A half-burnt torch lay in the damp grass, illuminating two writhing shapes on the grass.
Dimitri, in his full, monstrous glory, streaking his claws down a villager’s back.
“Shoot him!” someone yelled.
A pistol flashed in the dark, a shot splintering against the log behind Dimitri’s shoulder. He snarled at the shooter, abandoning the villager, advancing on the person higher up the bank.
Guy Somesbury. Of course it was.
He trembled under the weight of Dimitri’s glare, shrinking back into shadows, fingers shaking as he reloaded, pointing it in his direction.
Adeline wasted no breath screaming. She fired a shot above Guy’s head.
Dimitri spun to face her.
For a second, she imagined a flicker, something other than rage in those solid red eyes. For a second, she dared to hope in the big magic of old, that Dimitri was still in there, that she could reach him.
