Page 84 of Panther in the Shadows
"No." The word tears from my throat. "She doesn't get to die. Not after everything. Not after saving everyone."
"I don't know what to do." Declan's voice is raw. Strained. "She's burned out. Her magic's gone. There's nothing to work with."
The brotherhood gathers around us. All of them staring at the woman who saved the island. Who freed the dead. Who stopped an ancient evil from rising.
She can't die. I won't let her.
My shadows respond before conscious thought. They pour from my skin. Dark and cold and powerful. The magic that's always been mine. The gift I inherited from my grandfather. Shadow-walking. Death-touched.
The opposite of everything Moira is.
Light and water. Life and healing. She's the ocean at dawn. I'm the darkness that hides beneath. We shouldn't work together. Our magic should repel. Should fight.
But love doesn't care about should.
The shadows wrap around her, sinking into her skin. Dark tendrils binding to pale limbs. Not to smother but to anchor. To give her fading life force something solid to cling to when her own magic has abandoned her. It looks wrong. Looks like corruption. But it's not. It's mine. And she's mine. And I will not lose her.
"Rafe, what are you doing?" Declan's voice is sharp with alarm.
"Saving her."
Light and dark. Water and shadow. Opposites that should destroy each other. Instead, they bind.
Her chest hitches. Once. Twice. Salt water explodes from her mouth. She's coughing. Choking. Gasping for air that her lungs forgot they needed.
Her eyes flutter open. Human. Alive. Seeing me.
"Rafe?" Her voice is barely a whisper. "Elspeth. Did we?—?"
"The binding broke." I hold her carefully, mindful of injuries I can't see. "You did it. You saved them all."
"She pushed me up. Elspeth. I felt her." Tears cut tracks through salt and exhaustion on her face. "She saved me."
The Sound is calm now. No more corruption. No more death magic staining the water black. Bodies float on the surface, peaceful at last. No longer animated. No longer weapons. Just the dead, finally allowed to rest.
Declan's already coordinating the recovery. The brotherhood spreads out across the water. Pulling corpses from the Sound. Treating them with dignity. These people deserve proper burials. Deserve their families' closure.
Marco. Brigid. Others whose names I never learned. Deaths that Catalina turned into weapons. Souls now free.
But Elspeth. Where's Elspeth?
Moira's thinking the same thing. She struggles to sit up, searching the water with desperate eyes. "Where is she? Where's my sister?"
"I don't know." The admission feels like failure. "I haven't seen her."
Grayson approaches, water streaming from his fur. He shifts, naked and exhausted. "We've recovered the rest of the bodies of Catalina’s victims, but there was no child's body."
"She has to be here." Moira tries to stand. Fails. I catch her before she collapses again. "She was bound. She was one of them. She has to be?—"
"Maybe she wasn't bound the same way." Declan crouches beside us. "Maybe because she died so long ago. Or because she was a child. Or because she was Flynn blood. The binding might have been different."
"Or maybe she's just gone." Moira's voice cracks. "Maybe I freed her and she dissipated. Maybe there's nothing left."
"We'll search." I tighten my hold on her. "We'll find answers. But not tonight. Tonight you need rest. You need healing."
"I need to know if I saved her or killed her."
"You saved her." The certainty in my voice surprises even me. "I felt it when the binding broke. They were all freed. All of them."
