“Charlotte?”
The familiar voice is like a light in the darkness. Relief floods me. But only for a moment.
Grady stills at Ricardo’s call. Leaning forward, he hauls me a few inches farther over the edge. “Stay quiet, or I’ll make this slow and painful.”
It’s already too slow and too painful.
Footsteps approach, and the greenhouse door opens.
Frozen in place, I weigh my options. Stay still and hope I can overcome Grady on my own. Fight and scream and hope Ricardo gets here before Grady can finish pitching me over the edge.
Rearing up again, I twist in an attempt to see where Ricardo is. I can’t see anything on the roof because of the angle Grady’s forcing my body into, but the greenhouse must be blocking Ricardo’s view of us. Otherwise he’d already have Grady on the ground. I know it with everything in me.
Grady stops my backward arching, shoving me down once more with a forearm across my back. His scorching, rank breath hits my skin, making revulsion roil in my throat.
The greenhouse light flicks on. Grady must have turned it off after he knocked me out.
“Char? I found your shoe. I know you’re up here somewhere. Gul told me where you were heading. Please talk to me.”
Surprise and relief hit me at once. Gul’s still alive!
Grady curses low. Harsh fingers dimple my flesh. Leaving marks of his anger on my skin.
Adrenaline shoots through my veins as I struggle against my attacker. Kick my legs. Pinwheel my arms. With renewed energy, I scream. “Ricardo! Help!”
Grady’s blunt arms wrap around my waist. With a heave, he lifts me up, suspending me over the edge of the building. His long arms are surprisingly strong, but I’m already slipping through his grasp. He won’t be able to keep this hold on me for more than a few seconds.
My arms hang below me, fingers splayed. If I fall now, it’s over. Everything I worked for will be erased. I’ll be just one more fatality at the academy. Notable only in my death.
An image of myself lying still on the pavement below flashes through my mind’s eye like a premonition. This is it. I’m going to die.
With the realization comes a moment of clarity. I’m not going down without a hell of a fight. Bellowing, I kick out my legs. Reach.
Just as Grady lets go, I lock my legs around his waist. He yells in fear as his added weight propels us over the side of the academy.
“No!” Ricardo shouts from a few feet away.
Grady and I fall. Spin through the air as we both scramble. Try to grab onto the side of the building. But we’re too far from the intricate facade to grasp it. Darkened windows gape as we plummet toward the ground and almost certain death.
Blood rushes through my ears, blocking out all other noise.
Grady slips from between my ankles, screaming. His face distorted in terror.
With immense effort, I reach out and take hold of the front of Grady’s shirt.
We crash through the naked boughs of the nearest tree, its brittle limbs tugging at my clothes and scraping red traces into my skin. My wrist slams against a thicker branch with a crack, and pain shoots along my arm.
The hard, frozen ground meets us with a crunch as we smash into one of the bushes. Twigs snap and scratch over me like needle-sharp claws, igniting my skin with a dull burn.
My attacker lies underneath me, splayed out over the flattened center of the shrubbery. His eyes are shut and one of his legs is bent at a sickening angle, but he’s still breathing.
Gasping, I try to catch a breath, but all of the air has whooshed out of my chest. It’s as if a weight is compressing my chest, rendering my lungs unable to expand.
As soon as I get a gulp of air, I recoil. Scrambling off him and away, afraid he’ll lunge at me like the villain in a horror movie. My heart batters my ribs, but I can’t peel my eyes off the unmoving form sprawled over the ground. Pain lances up my arm. One of my wrists feels like it’s been shot through with a nail gun, but my legs feel okay.
My chest heaves a sob. It’s over. It takes every ounce of strength I have left not to keel over into the grass.
“Charlotte!” Ricardo’s yell from above makes me jump and swivel around to look upward. I drag an arm across my eyes.
He’s there, leaning over the side of the building. A familiar shape in the dark. “Are you okay? How about Grady?” The questions come out strangled.
“I think I’m okay.” My voice cracks. I prod at Grady with one foot, but he doesn’t so much as flinch. Wincing, I crab-walk further away and collapse on the shards of dormant grass. My entire body is heaving with the force of what’s just happened, and my mind is whirling so fast it’s being scrambled.
“I’m coming,” Ricardo calls. “Don’t move.” A door slams shut.
Little chance of me going anywhere. I don’t think I could get up even if I wanted to. Instead, I stay there: arms around my knees. I’m shaking so bad my bones are chattering. The neat twist I’d put my hair in earlier hangs sloppily off to one side of my head. It’s a tangled mess of pins.
Nearby, sirens slash through the silent winter night. Please, please let them be coming for me.
Grady’s still form draws my gaze like a magnet. The wind catches his hair and it floats above his head like seaweed in the deep. His chest continues to rise and fall in jagged, uneven pants.
I exhale loudly and watch as my breath wafts upward in a puff of swirling steam.
The door to the courtyard is flung open with a slam, and Ricardo sprints toward me over the grass. Collapsing on his knees he enfolds me in his arms. His heart beats a frenzied, uneven rhythm into my back. Shuffling around on his hands, he pulls on my arm, encouraging me to unfold from my little ball. I comply, and he looks me over from head to toe, his hands gentle on my elbows and knees. “Charlotte, mon coeur. Are you hurt? Anything broken?”
“I think my wrist is broken.” I hold out the arm that is radiating pain.
Taking a gentle hold of my forearm, he presses a kiss to the back of my hand, like my mother used to do when I got cuts and scrapes as a little kid. My heart squeezes, not unpleasantly this time.
Ricardo glances over my shoulder at Grady, and then his eyes fix on me. “My heart stopped when I saw you fall off that roof. I thought…” The devastation in his face does things to me. I put up a valiant fight, biting my tongue to keep from crying, but the tide won’t ebb. The boy looking at me won’t think less of me if he sees me crying. No, instead I have a sneaking suspicion it will make him like me even more. But the simple truth is I can’t hold it in anymore. Not sure I even want to. With a shudder, I let go. “Grady killed Professor Rook. And tried to kill you and Gul,” I whisper through my tears.
Understanding lights his eyes. “For Rhiannon.”
I nod, unable to speak.
“It’s over now,” he whispers, dragging me into his lap until my side is pressed against his chest. His arms tighten around me as I bury my face in the front of his shirt. There’s a gentle press of a kiss on the top of my head. Faint words carry on the breeze. “Je t’aime, mon coeur.”
Sniffing, I look up into his eyes, not sure I heard what he just said correctly.
“You still…?” I whisper, hardly believing it.
Tightening his arms around me, he nods. “Je t’aime, Charlotte.”