Page 329 of Scarlet Wars
“Emma—” Sean choked on my name. “Please… I’m losing him!”
The words hit like a blade. I looked down at Jackson’s face—pale, barely conscious—and felt something inside me crack.
Not him.
Please, gods, not him.
“I don’t know…” The words broke out of me, choked and helpless. I started crying, not from grief but from raw panic. “I don’t know what to do. What do Ido?”
My hands shook against his chest, slick with blood. I had closed the wounds, stopped the bleeding, but his life was still slipping through my fingers.
Nothing was working. Nothing was enough.
Tears blurred my vision, dripping down onto his blood-slick shirt as I tried to force more power through him, tried tofeelthe right spell, the right healing,something, but it was like screaming into a void.
I didn’t understand what was wrong, I didn’t have the knowledge.
His chest barely moved beneath my hands.
“You’remy family, Jackson,” I wailed. “You’reourfamily. You can’t leave us. Fight this.”
A soft gasp rattled in his throat.
“Em—”
The faintest whisper.
I jerked back, eyes wide, searching his face.
“Don’t cry,” Jackson murmured, blood at the corner of his mouth. “You’re too pretty to cry.”
“Idiot,” I sobbed, brushing his matted hair back from his forehead. “I don’t even know what that means.”
He smiled. Weak.
His eyelids fluttered. Just barely. My heart slammed against my ribs.
Then—slowly, like it cost him everything—his gaze drifted toward Sean.
“Hey…” Jackson rasped, voice barely more than a breath.
Sean froze.
Jackson’s lips curved the smallest amount. His eyes were glassy, unfocused, but they found Sean andstayedthere.
“I love you,” he whispered.
Sean shattered.
He folded forward, forehead pressed to Jackson’s, sobs racking his whole body. “I love you too,” he choked. “You absolutebastard, I love you! Don’t youdareleave me now?—”
Jackson’s eyes slipped closed.
Then everything inside me broke, until a flicker of movement caught at the edge of my vision.
Cara was running toward us, limping hard, one arm clutched to her side. Her face was bloodless, her eyes wide, not with fear, but resolve.
She dropped to her knees beside us, her breath ragged.
