Page 34 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

This cruelty. Her suffering.

A flash of August’s bright grin slicing through stubbled cheeks struck like a blow to my sternum.

Two.

To take one was to extinguish the other.

It wouldn’t merely break my vow. It would decimate it.

And yet…

My magic probed, cataloging today’s injuries alongside those I’d been unable to finish healing yesterday. As the tally grew, I fought down a swallow. If she were mortal, I would pump her full of drugs and ease her passing.

Celestial genes were a different matter, even when robbed of magic.

With one twitch, her heart would stop.

It would be a mercy.

An icy hand settled limply over mine, drawing my gaze to groggily focused emerald eyes. A puff of air that might’ve been a word cracked from her mouth.

It was that desperate breath that broke me. That shattered the ice—that carefully cultivated doctor’s calm. Her eyes turned pleading as her bloodied tongue darted over colorless lips.

I summoned water for her, funneling a ribbon from the pitcher always left waiting and allowing her to sip without rising. My eyes burned as I tried to breathe through the ache inside my chest.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

With water glistening across her swollen lips, her eyes found mine again.

One word.

A knife to my heart.

“Please.”

Please.

Please what? Please kill her? Had she read the intent in my eyes?

Please heal her? Prolong the hell she’d no doubt entered willingly to keep someone else from it?

“Ally… I…”

“Please,” she repeated, her cracked lips opening twice as she fought for the words.

But there was only one more.

“August.”

I glanced over my shoulder to confirm that only the captain lingered in the hallway. His glower rivaled the betrayer’s—one capable of driving off most guards without a word.

“Still?” My voice cracked, my eyes dropping to the necklace of mottled yellow and blue around her throat as it bobbed.

A shaky dip of her chin.

A lone tear escaped, rolling down her swollen, purple cheek.

“He wouldn’t want this,” I breathed, fighting with every inch of my being to maintain that carefully cultivated calm. The same one I wrapped around myself when I had to tell a mother her baby no longer had a heartbeat. The fabric that held me together as I informed a beautiful twenty-five-year-old that a drunk driver had just made her a widow.