Page 33 of Sophie's Ruin
“I am willing to bet he sometimes wishes he’d died that night. Death would have been easier than enduring everything we haveput him through. It’s only been four nights, but we have ensured it felt like an eternity to him. An eternity of pain and suffering.”
My body was frigid cold and didn’t feel like my own. I was floating above it, watching the entire exchange from afar.
I didn’t move, didn’t breathe as Camilla continued, “How long are you going to let him suffer?” she called out into the pitch-black darkness of the woods, where I stood frozen, blending in with the shadows.
I imagined myself a part of the landscape, imagined the darkness wrapping around me like a blanket, dulling the pain Camilla’s words caused. They were lashing at me like whips, breaking my skin until I was bleeding on the dark forest floor. Or at least that was what it felt like.
Camilla’s smile disappeared as her features became all sharp angles and hard lines.
“Bring him out,” she barked an order over her shoulder without taking her eyes off the woods.
I closed my eyes and tried to force down the lump that had formed in my throat. It didn’t budge, clogging my airway. I choked on it, wanting to claw at my neck, but I couldn’t move as I listened to the commotion on the border. His scent reached me first, nearly knocking me off my feet. It had been here all along; I’d just been too shocked and blinded by my rage to notice it. Blood. I smelled his blood, the scent so potent that it overpowered the fresh and woodsy notes of him. In a heartbeat, I knew why when I opened my eyes. There was no point in keeping them closed—I couldn’t hide from what was unfolding right before me on the border.
I shattered into a million tiny pieces when my gaze landed on Henry being dragged out from behind Camilla by Moreau and Beatrice Stern. He was covered in blood. His blood, I knew from the smell. It matted his hair and ran down his bare chest, trickling from open wounds and lacerations. His pants weresoaked with it. He wasn’t healing. As I’d suspected, they’d been withholding blood from him so he would be too weak to fight or escape.
My vampire ears picked up on his ragged breathing and the sluggish beating of his heart. My own heart lurched in my chest as if trying to rip out of my rib cage and launch itself toward the border to reunite with Henry. My muscles tensed as I prepared to run, to close the distance between us. In the back of my mind, I knew it wouldn’t be smart, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t stand here and do nothing. I refused to spend another second separated from him.
“Don’t do anything foolish,” Celeste warned from behind me.
Snarling at her over my shoulder, I went to rip myself out of her grip. Except, my body didn’t obey. All my muscles locked up. I couldn’t move.
“It has to be done,” Celeste said low from behind me.
The bitch was freezing me in space, preventing me from going to Henry. I thrashed in the hold of her magic, or at least I thought I did. The fight was happening on the inside. On the outside, I was just standing still, my muscles stiff.
Moreau and Beatrice threw Henry to the ground, and he landed with a grunt in a heap by Camilla’s feet. She bent down and picked something up off the ground next to him. Terror choked me when I saw it was a metal chain attached to a metal collar around Henry’s neck. They’d leashed him like a fucking dog!
“How about now, Sophie?!” Camilla shouted into the night, her words a question and a challenge. “Will you surrender?”
A loud hiss erupted from me as I curled my fingers into fists, my elongated claws piercing my palms. My blood began trickling on the ground as I stood there, unable to move a muscle. I cursed Celeste under my breath, but I was also thankful for the spellshe’d put on me, because at that moment, I would surrender. I would do anything to end Henry’s suffering.
Camilla’s upper lip curled, and she yanked at the chain attached to Henry’s neck, snapping his head back. He snarled in defiance, but Camilla slammed her booted foot into the middle of his back, pushing him to the ground. Pain laced upmyback as if it were me in Henry’s place. My neck burned as if the collar was encircling my throat, not his.
“No?” Camilla challenged again, scanning the woods.
I dug my claws in deeper, focusing on the pain instead of the border. Then I focused on Henry’s features, blood-smeared and covered in blue and purple splotches. His eyes were dark and wild, his gaze unseeing as he stared into the space before him. I latched on to his face, trying to communicate with him across the distance. To let him know I was here, that I hadn’t abandoned him, and he wasn’t alone. Or perhaps he was better off not knowing I was here, because I could do nothing to help him right now. His clumped lashes swept down, shielding his eyes, and when they lifted again, his gaze was bluer and more focused. He stared at the spot where I was standing in the woods as if he knew I was here.
“You are my heart,” he rasped, barely above a whisper.
The wind carried the words to me, and it felt like my legs would go out from under me, but Celeste’s spell held me upright.
Did he know I was here? Could he sense it somehow?
Camilla’s head jerked in my direction.
“Is she here?!” she demanded in a raised voice.
“We’re leaving,” Celeste said urgently behind me.
“No,” I ground out, tears welling and gliding down my cheeks.
My vision blurred, and I blinked rapidly to clear it, but before I could see Henry’s face again, I felt the pull of Celeste’s magic. A second later, she glimmered from the tree line, bringing mewith her. We appeared in the heart of the Black Forest, and when she finally released her hold on me, my knees buckled, and I crumpled to the hard ground, sobbing.
“Take me back,” I begged, my voice hoarse.
“No.” The witch’s tone was unyielding.
“We have to save him.”
