Eliska opened her eyes and saw Yann and Anríq both sitting next to her. She also saw Yvan, Niyazi, and Rien sitting nearby.

  She blinked, remembered, and her throat tightened.

  Anríq barely glanced at her before he looked away. Yann’s eyes said it all.

  “No!” she choked. “No!”

  “I’m so sorry,” Yann husked. “You tried everything…”

  “NO!!” She heard her voice rising. “He can’t be gone! He can’t be!”

  Yann lowered his eyes. It was true. Barsali was dead.

  Eliska couldn’t stand the pain. The Dark poison inside her made it a thousand times worse. The Dark immediately turned that pain against her. It was her fault. Barsali would be alive right now if she only shattered that Layer sooner.

  She couldn’t hold back tears. She twisted onto her side facing away from Yann so he wouldn’t see.

  As soon as she moved, she felt the lingering pain of injuries she sustained when the Darkling stepped on her. Anríq must have healed her of multiple broken bones and damaged organs. She still couldn’t move very well.

  She broke down in tears. She tried her best to do it silently, but they tore her apart anyway. She was the one who got Barsali killed—and Omer. She didn’t have to open her eyes to realize the truth. Omer wasn’t here, either.

  Yann rested his hand on her shoulder from behind. “It wasn’t your fault…..”

  She lashed out at him, threw her elbow at him to knock his hand away, and shrieked her loudest before she thought to stop herself. “Leave me alone!” she screeched.

  He took his hand away, but he didn’t leave.

  Her own reaction made her curl up in a ball of shame. She couldn’t even accept the comfort of the people who mattered to her most.

  She should leave right now to protect all of them from herself, but she couldn’t even do that—not while she was injured.

  She shouldn’t be crying right now. She hardly knew Barsali—or Omer—and yet she shared something with both of them, especially Barsali. He was the one who first connected with her—apart from Yann.

  She shared Barsali’s memories. She knew the deep connection between him and his brother Watchmen. They lost more than she did when he and Omer died.

  None of them sat over there crying over their lost comrades. They lost a lot more in Middleborough, but they just kept going. They kept doing their jobs no matter what else happened. Even Barsali did that.

  She couldn’t hold back the anguish, though. These tears—they came from somewhere deeper than losing Barsali. She just kept caring about these people more and more every day, but she couldn’t save any of them.

  Every ounce of care and energy she put into them just wound up getting thrown back in her face. Losing Barsali hurt worse than any other insult yet. Why did she have to meet him and start to care about him—only to lose him?

  He didn’t leave the Watch when Auriel died. He doubled down and committed himself even more than before.

  Eliska should do the same thing. She knew that, but this poison inside her twisted everything the wrong way. God, she hated herself! Everything about herself revolted her.

  Shame and disgust burned her from the inside when she thought about all her many colossal failures.

  She should have made sure Barsali stayed with the group when they fell into that tower maze. He and Omer would be alive right now if she only did the right thing by all of them.

  She should have shattered the chaos Layer immediately instead of screwing around killing Darklings. She let her excitement run away with her. The thought of killing Darklings took over and distracted her from protecting the Watchmen.

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  She would never be able to wash away the stain of their deaths. Wesh’s death was her fault, too. She should have protected him from the Voyant or at least stopped Wesh from attacking him.

  All these people….lost…..

  She broke down sobbing again. No one tried to stop her this time. Even that made her simmer with resentment that no one cared enough to stop her—the heartless bastards.

  They left her there for what seemed like a long time. She eventually couldn’t cry anymore.

  The pain of Barsali’s loss added its poison to the growing pocket of sludge inside her.

  She would carry that for life—along with all the other insults and brutalities of her miserable existence.

  What was the point of her taking Barsali’s poison only for him to wind up dead? She shouldn’t have bothered to save him at all.

  Now she was stuck with it. She was the one who had to live with it—for nothing. She would never get rid of it.

  She lay on her side and tried not to listen to the men talking. She didn’t know or even care where the Watch landed or what they were doing or what they planned to do. What the hell did she care?

  Just then, another hand came to rest on her shoulder. It wasn’t Yann. It couldn’t be. It felt too heavy.

  She stiffened, and before she could move, the hand shifted down to her back—to some of the bones the Darkling broke when it stepped on her.

  Magic flooded her and surrounded her spine. Anríq. She shut her eyes and tried to block out the feeling of him touching her.

  He pressed his palm into her back between her shoulder blades and then crawled his hand up to the back of her neck.

  His powerful fingers clamped around her neck and the base of her skull. His magic invaded her in a torrent of warmth.

  Her instincts told her to fight him off, but his magic gripped her. She went limp in his grasp.

  That feeling of being totally helpless in his hands—and at the same time totally safe with him—it made her start crying again—not for Barsali but for herself.

  God, what she wouldn’t give for someone to heal her from this Darkness! The Guardian Templars of Marine’s order might have healed her if the Voyant hadn’t wiped out their Temple before she got there.

  Anríq wouldn’t take the Darkness away from her and she didn’t want him to. She didn’t want to risk him.

  He kept his hand around her neck from behind and his other hand closed on her forehead. His magic flooded every part of her and knit all her bones back together.

  The pain started to subside—the physical pain did. Nothing could ever heal the other pain because nothing could bring Barsali back.

  She should have grieved over Omer as much as she grieved over Barsali. Wasn’t Omer’s life just as valuable as Barsali’s? She knew it was. Omer probably killed more Darklings in his life than Eliska ever killed.

  Anríq worked on her head and neck for a while and then shifted in front of her. He didn’t go away just because she hated herself.

  His eyes overflowed with sympathy and understanding when he gazed down at her. He placed his big hand on her chest and his magic flooded her heart.

  Tears sprang back to her eyes, but they meant something different now.

  He didn’t hide from them. He kept gazing into her face the whole time he worked on her.

  His magic did something to her heart. It didn’t heal her, but it somehow made the poison more tolerable. She couldn’t hate herself.

  She would gladly have died in Barsali’s place. She spent all her effort and attention in that chaos Layer trying to get near enough to shatter the Layer to take the Watchmen to safety.

  She’d been about to do it when she got hit—and then he got hit while she was down. It really wasn’t her fault.

  Thinking that tore her guts out. She would much rather believe that it was her fault. Then at least she would know who to hate.

  Hating herself and blaming herself made it all so much easier. Then she didn’t have to live with the sheer senseless finality that those two fine, upright, courageous men were really dead.

  Anríq pushed her over onto her back. She lacked the strength to resist, but she didn’t want to resist him. She couldn’t resist someone as kind and caring as Anríq.

  He started working on her stomach to repair her internal organs. That position brought her face to face with Yann. He didn’t leave her alone when she screamed at him.

  He would never leave her alone. She knew that now. He would always stay with her no matter what. Her getting poisoned by the Dark would never be enough to make him leave her.

  He gazed down at her with just as much painful care and heartfelt understanding as Anríq. Looking at Yann while Anríq radiated his magic into her—it stabbed her in the heart.

  Yann made it a thousand times worse by taking her hand and clasping it between both of his. He did it in front of Anríq, Yvan, and all the other men. Yann didn’t even try to hide what he was doing.

  Tears streaked down both sides of her face. She turned her head so she wouldn’t have to look at Yann, but she couldn’t take her hand back. His touch felt so damn good—as good as Anríq’s.

  She couldn’t lose this. She couldn’t lose this one small handful of people who actually cared about her. These men—each of them was more priceless than pure gold. She would give her life for any of them, even Rien.

  Her eyes kept migrating back to Yann. He held her hand the whole time Anríq worked on her.

  He moved down to her pelvis, gripped her hip bones on both sides, and sent another rush of heat into her from both sides.

  She felt in that flow of magic that she must have shattered her pelvis along with probably every other bone in her body.

  She should be grateful to him for healing her—and she was grateful. She just couldn’t be happy about anything anymore. This poison inside her turned the whole world Dark. It even turned these two young men Dark.

  End of Chapter 24.

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

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