Page 163 of Scarlet Wars
“What the fuck was that?” I roared, barely hearing myself over the blood pounding in my ears. “You fuckingsacrificeyourself? Are you out of your fuckingmind?!”
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this furious at anyone. Not where the anger tasted like gut wrenching fear.
“You pull that shit ever again,” I shouted in her face, “and I swear on my fucking life Emma, I’ll throw you in a dungeon and keep you chained there until your sanity drags itself back to the fuckingsurface!”
I was breathing like I’d sprinted through hell. Shaking. Staring at her like I didn’t even recognize who she was anymore.
And then I grabbed her.
Not to hold.
Not to comfort.
No, to godsdamnkissher.
Fucking crashed into her like the world was burning and she was the last piece of it I still trusted. My mouth slammed onto hers—raw, wild, desperate—because there weren’t words for this. Not for the way she almost died. Not for the way she lived through it.
Her lips parted against mine—shocked—and I drank in everything she gave me. Every tremble. Every hitch of breath. Every flicker of her pulse under my hands.
Her hands fisted in my jacket, dragging me closer as she met me with the same brutal urgency tearing through my chest. She kissed me back like she had been drowning too, like she needed this as much as I did.
My fingers tangled in her hair, her body pressed to mine, and for one impossibly short, impossibly perfect second, everything was exactly as it should be.
When we pulled apart, my forehead dropped against hers, still panting. My grip on her didn’t loosen. I didn’t care my heart was still jackhammering like it was trying to escape my ribs.
“Don’t youeverdo that again,” I muttered against her mouth, trembling with everything I hadn’t said.
She didn’t answer. Just stared up at me with those wrecked, dangerous blue eyes, and nodded.
We stood there, still tangled, the adrenaline still burning through our systems. Then slowly, we drew back.
I let out a shaky, disbelieving laugh, scrubbing a hand down my face. “How the hell are you alive? Projecting that much energy beneath a bubble… Hell, unleashing any kind of haze…” I shook my head. “You should be dead.”
“Mr. Colt is absolutely right.”
I pivoted, heart still hammering in my chest.
The High Chief stood on the Canadian side of the border, his Corona—the dark metallic circlet, thin and streamlined, with razor-sharp edges and rune-like engravings that pulsed faintly in dark red and silver—aimed directly at Emma.
James stood beside him, his Skindo raised to the Chief’s throat, but his stunned gaze pinned on Emma like he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.
A second later, Sean burst through a green portal and sprinted across the border toward us.
I moved in front of her without thinking, now flanked by my brother, but the High Chief didn’t so much as flinch.
“Emma Thompson.” His tone was low. “In the name of Magi World and the United Chiefs, you are under arrest for treason against us. Specifically for creating an unsanctioned bubble that took the lives of three Cyclos children and put all magi in the US in danger.”
“What?” she hissed, pure bewilderment in her voice.
“If you come willingly,” the High Chief continued, his tone smooth and deadly, “I’ll let your friends live. Fight me,” his smile sharpened, all dark and cold, “and watch them die.”
EMMA
This was starting to feel all too familiar: being accused of something ridiculous, two people I loved moving in front of me, defending me, and them being threatened with death.
A flash of my parents’ house cut through me, leaving my hands trembling. Blood on the floor.
Their bodies: gone.
