Page 12 of Blood that Burns
CHAPTER FOUR
LAW
“Maggie.” Her name comes out hoarse as my eyes war with my brain.
It can’t be.
I watched her fall from Widow’s Peak, her blond hair blowing in the wind while her yellow dress billowed out around her. The same—or nearly the same—yellow dress that she wears now.
I was unable to make it to her in time. The Council beat me to her, and I’ve spent the last year torturing myself with that knowledge every damn day.
She can’t be alive. I’d given up that hope as I looked over the cliff, down at the jagged rocks below. There is no way she could’ve survived that fall.
They never found her body.
The girl sits upon a child’s bed, eyes wide as her head bounces between Julian and me. My eyes never stray from her as I search for signs that this is some devious trick Marc has arranged to torture me further.
The girl might look similar, but she’s... different.
My eyes continue to scan her from her head to her toes.
Maggie had been haunted, her face pale and gaunt, eyes sunken in and lifeless. Even when she was smiling, the ghosts of her past marred her pretty face.
The girl in front of me looks... alive.
“Law.” She smiles, and it knocks the wind from my chest.
A lump forms in my throat at the sound of her voice. It’s her. It really is.
Without another thought I rush to her side, pulling her in to my chest. “God, Maggie. Shit... I’m so sorry.” My hands won’t stop moving over her hair, her face. It’s really her, and she’s okay.
Her hair is pulled back from her face, and for the first time since I’ve known her, the dark circles no longer frame her eyes. The haunted look I came to know well is absent. Despite the odd surroundings, she looks... healthy.
Here she is, alive and well, in this godforsaken, dark, crippling estate, when all this time I feared the worst. It ate me up inside. The responsibility I carried for her death. For what happened to Marina afterward.
I failed her miserably.
Her lips graze the shell of my ear, and I tense as she whispers for only me to hear, “You found me.”
My eyes close of their own volition as the melodic words flow through me. Her voice has always been soothing. A balm.
My mind wanders back to that day almost two years ago when I saved Maggie from an attack in Johnson Park. That day set us down a new path, aside from the relationship we’d always had. A friendship.
I’m panting, but only from the adrenaline coursing through my veins at seeing that man holding Maggie against his chest, hand over her mouth. I want to kill him.
I tackled him to the ground, prepared to rid the world of one more monster, but Maggie begged for me to stop. If he hurt her, I would end his life, despite her pleading.
With willpower I didn’t know I possessed, I let him go. For her.
He scurries away like the pathetic rat he is.
The need to chase after him and drain him of his blood is so intense that I can’t stand. I’m hunched over, working on breathing.
“Law.” Maggie’s hand rests atop my shoulder. “Are you okay?”
I choke out a humorless laugh. “You’re serious? Mags, I’m not human. I’m fine.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “You’re on your knees. I... I just assumed you were hurt.”