The world stilled. More to the point, Judgment did. Grace afforded him many talents and in this, he looked for some possible solution before she continued pitching down the rough stairs. Each outcome cycled through the same.
No one deserved the fate awaiting Dahlia. Every blow of her soft body against the unforgiving concrete did damage. The human excrement watched her tumble down that flight. Not moving, Judgment waited. The sound of her breathing flowed to him along with the soft thud of her anxious heart.
Alive.
A look came over the male’s face and Judgment’s hackles raised. Until this moment, the filth had been fueled by pure, unreasonable fury. A madness that afflicted their kind. While deplorable, it often led to impulsive, if unforgivable, actions. The universe paused and Judgment with it until the male took the first step, then the next.
She had survived that first fall. Though hurt, she was alive.
When his foot connected with her and sent her tumbling down the next flight, her head struck another step and the distinct crunch of bone reverberated through Judgment. Malice aforethought.
Alex wanted her dead.
Bastard.
Murderer.
The fleeting thought slipped through his reserve a split second before the garbage turned on his heel and fled up the stairs leaving Dahlia’s broken body alone in the cold, empty stairwell.
No.
Not alone.
He climbed to where she lay and knelt down. Blood spilled onto the stone around her. The lighting washed her out, leaving her skin seemingly sallow and stripping the color even from her lips. They’d been a softer pink earlier.
A strange sensation wavered through him. This woman had done the impossible. She’d disturbed the malaise around his brothers. Now, as the result of one hateful, premeditated act, following a litany of violence, she would die.
Cold and alone.
Judgment glanced upward to where the culprit had fled. There remained a miniscule chance he would call for help. A sliver of baseless hope he might regret his haste and temper.
Not soon enough.
The stutter of her breath pulled him and her eyes fluttered open. The fierceness in them demanded acknowledgement. Broken, battered, and twisted, Dahlia continued to fight.
Her heart, beating for all its worth, could not sustain against the damage she’d taken. A single tear slid down her cheek and a raspy breath cut the silence as she whispered, “Help.”
Judgment tilted his head.
Dahlia’s gaze fixed on him.
Still crouched, he studied her.
“Please,” she whispered, then stretched out her fingers to him.
A foreign emotion flooded him. The injustice here was his brothers’ failure to act. They’d seen something and now this beautiful light suffered for it. To show them how they erred, he could do…
Judgment hesitated and then flexed his grace. Time slowed as her heart joined her breath in its agonized stumble. At a simple touch of his fingers to her temples, all of her desires and motives pummeled into him as an abstract knowing only he, as Judgment, could read.
“Make it stop?” The question revealed more of the asker than she might have realized.
“The pain?” He pressed his palm to her forehead. He was no healer, but he could allay some of it. Comfort eased the taut lines of her mouth.
“Thank you.”
“Do not thank me yet, Dahlia,” he said, intoning her name and testing each syllable for her worth. The woman lying there had not lived a happy life nor one of great comfort. But she had a good soul. A kind one. She sought to help others, even the trash who left her lying here. “You help people?”
“Sometimes,” she said, a faint smile curling her lips. “Not at the moment.”
Humor. She was delirious in the ghost of her pain, and still she found humor.
“I cannot save you,” he told her and understanding kindled in her glazed over eyes. “This you must accept from the beginning of our bargain.” She watched him, but made no move or attempt to answer him, slipping far too fast, even as time slowed for him.
“This should not have happened to you and while I can’t undo it, I think we can help each other.” Even as he made the offer a small piece of himself took a step back and looked at him askance. This flew in the face of all the rules. While not strictly forbidden, this was not an action to be undertaken lightly and there were rules. For him.
For her.
“How?” Barely a whisper on her lips. Holding them in that moment between her next and last breath required great skill and effort.
“I can share my grace,” he told her quickly. “But it will only buy you time. Time for you to help me punish my brothers for abandoning you and I will punish the one who did this to you.”
Understanding kindled in her gaze right before her lids fell shut. “How long?” She coughed.
“A month, maybe a little longer.” If his calculations were right. “But that passing will not be this. The pain and the injuries, they will be gone. You will simply—stop.”
Another tear trembled on her lashes, and she gasped her next words. “I can’t kill your brothers.”
No, she really couldn’t. “There are more ways to punish someone than to kill them, Dahlia. The punishment, after all, should match the crime.”
“Will you tell me their crime?”
He allowed himself a smile. “Perhaps. But you must agree to this now, or I’m afraid your life ends, here.” Her kindness and nature should have been rewarded. Instead…
Dahlia swallowed, and somehow she managed to open her eyes. “What’s your name?”
“You can call me Seth,” Judgment told her as he threaded fingers through the blood slickened hair at her temple. For a moment, her lucidity returned with a bit of her strength.
“Okay, Seth,” she whispered, lips quirking like this was all a joke. “If this isn’t one of those light at the end of the tunnel moments where I’m experiencing a hallucination because of oxygen deprivation to the brain… I accept. I’ll get retribution for you. You take care of Alex. I was wrong to want to fix him. You can’t fix evil.”
Judgment considered her for a moment. “You are not asking for mercy for him?” He had to be sure.
Dahlia’s gaze hardened. “He doesn’t deserve it.”
No. He really didn’t.
“Then you have my word,” his voice softened and he slid his hand deeper into her hair, carefully palming her damaged skull as he lifted her. “And my grace,” he whispered before he released time and caught her last breath with his, closing his mouth over hers and exhaling it back into her body and igniting that stubborn spark that fought on even as it guttered in the darkness.
Light flashed. Authority resounded through him and her heart thundered as he gave her what she would need. Not much, it couldn’t be too much. Her human body wouldn’t be able to take it. But life flooded her and then her hand clasped his nape, fisting around his braid and she slid her tongue against his.
Lightning sizzled through his system as something shifted and changed. Then he lifted his head and met Dahlia’s dazzled gaze. “Wow…” she whispered, then her eyes rolled back and she collapsed. He caught her easily and rose. Her body used his grace and was already working hard to repair itself.
Sleep was what she needed most for now. Climbing the stairs, he exited on the roof. The hot, humid air rushed against him as he unfurled his wings and shot into the sky. First he would settle her.