Salt to Her Sea ✔️

24. falling

AKESIS

It just takes a second. One second and everything can turn upside down. Everyone says that, but no one understands the magnitude of it until it happens to them. I didn't understand it.

The knife slid right between his ribs, went through the left lung, and clipped his heart. He would bleed out in moments if he didn't drown first. Within a beat he was already beginning to cough, his own red essence bloomed on the cotton shirt he wore. It spread down and out and he watched it like he couldn't believe what had just happened. But before he even fell, I surprised myself. I found my own knife in my hand. Eyes landed on the wolf that pinned the deadly blow to my mate.

"What did you do?" My scream was hoarse, my voice uncompliant and raking up my throat. When I looked at the wolf I saw black eyes, a hand on my thigh with nails digging in. I felt my head slamming back on a metal table, a needle sliding into my vein, the pain between my legs. I heard Thadal screaming, disgusting groans, and the whisper of threats against the shell of my ear.

"Thought you could just get away?" Vayne had another knife ready and poised in his hand, he was wasting my time. He approached me fast, stepping into our radius with darkness in his eyes. There was no saving this wolf who was sick in the head. "You think that was enough? Look what you did!"

I flinched at his screaming tone, wanting to sink into the forest floor and disappear forever. This is what he did to me. He destroyed me, tore me apart from the inside out. There was no more real thief than him, with a Sea of torment inside of him that urged him to take everything that didn't belong to him. I heard Thadal grunt behind me and the following chill that shook me to the core.

Smoke plumed in the distance where the Lab was quickly burning down, it was visible through the trees. There was a snap inside me, clean as a broken bone, a tree's limb in a wicked storm. A piece of me fell away, looking at his wolf; a personal demon.

"The two of you are destroyers." He seethed with venom. "All that hard work, all the saving we could have done. You have taken it away from hundreds of wolves."

I gaped, stepping back towards Thadal as he stalked. His eyes were pitch black, glinting in the overcast light that made the forest look gloomy.

"What? Why do you look so broken? Hmm? Your mate is dying, you're about to die. He can't save you, no one can save you. Pathetic little female."

The snap furrowed and splintered, my soul felt like it was breaking. Before I could take a breath, form another thought, I let my own weapon fly.

Kill or be killed, Thadal once told me. You could have to make that decision, and you must choose your life.

Every training session I ever had with knives in the Peak came back to me as if I had never left. My arm hiked up, the handle gripped nimbly between my fingers. I lifted my opposite hand to aim and then flung my right arm forward as fast as he blinked. The blade went straight through Vayne's throat. He fell to the ground and began to choke as my mate was, but I had already turned around. The pain of taking a life took my breath away, it was against every ounce of my nature, but I ignored it.

Thadal was tipping to the side and I hurried to try and catch him but ultimately only ended up falling over him. I rolled him onto his back and grabbed the handle of the knife. His eyes were intent on mine.

"Don't," he rasped. "You can't heal me, it'll kill you."

After all, he was right. This would be the last straw with his injury being so severe. I wouldn't live to see the end of this healing. A small slice of me didn't want to die, but the bigger part didn't care. Thadal was right, there was no living with only half of yourself.