He had taken from me. Robbed me of my energy, the very essence of my life. His aura glowed with nothing but white light. Like that man in the park. He and my…my Finn, they were the same!
I tried to crawl backward, away from him, and fell onto my butt, burning my elbows on the thick carpet. Each breath was like sucking air through the eye of a sharp needle. His euphoric expression changed slowly, too slowly, to one of concern. He rushed to my side and dropped to his knees in front of me.
“Why do you look like that?” he whispered. “Don’t you feel what I feel, Cora?” He ran his hands over his head and looked to the ceiling. “Amazing!” Then he looked down at me again and took my face in his burning hands.
I had no energy left to fight him. No strength left to fend him off. I couldn’t even lift my arms. “Please, please don’t,” I choked out.
“No one ever told me love was so beautifully grand, so exquisite.” He bent to kiss me, and even then, even as I came undone, even as I faded from myself, I loved his sweet words, his lips on mine. I could not fight. He was killing me. And something inside me still loved.
Suddenly, someone yanked us apart.
Ina shoved Finn away and stood over me, shielding me from his white glare. I closed my eyes and collapsed, rolling to my side, curling in on myself. I was so cold. This must be what people feel like when they bleed to death.
“Clancy!” she screamed, while putting two fingers to the pulse point on my neck.
I opened my eyes briefly when Uncle Clancy burst into the room, noted his shocked face as he looked from me to Finn. “What’s happened?” he asked.
“Oh, shut up! We all knew this would happen. Get her out of here!”
Clancy scooped me up off the floor and carried me to the door. I began to slip out of consciousness but fought my eyes open to look at Finn. I couldn’t believe he would hurt me like he had. He attempted to push past his mother. His long fingers reached out, clawed the air for me.
His mother’s voice was angry. She pointed at Clancy. “Out! Now! Get her on the next plane back to America. Get her back to her father. We can’t keep her safe here. She was never safe here.” Her voice softened then. “That girl’s not safe anywhere.”
Ina touched Finn’s cheek. Her words followed me down the long hallway. “Oh, son, look what she’s done to you.”
Forty-One
I awoke in the back of a horse-drawn buggy, swaddled in a scratchy wool blanket smelling of wet animal. I had no idea how much time had passed. Warmth slowly flowed back into my body but only at my core. It was a small bit of coal smoldering inside my belly. I could barely move or stay awake. I stared up at the incredible scattering of stars and thought that if I wanted to, I could fall into them. Into forever.
The rhythmic sway of the buggy rocked me like a baby. Each clop of the horse’s hooves took me farther from Rising Sun Manor and from Finn. One thought of him and my heart exploded, countless bursts of light competing with the stars.
His mother had said I wasn’t safe. She must’ve known what he was capable of. But then why did she say I had done something to him? What kind of human steals the aura of another like a greedy child grabbing candy and then blames the candy?
The Arrazi. The ones wiping out the Scintilla.
I was so naive.
Thieving Ireland. My happiness was stolen. My beliefs about how the world worked—those had been taken, too. I had come no closer to finding my mother than I was back at home with a box of treasures scattered across my floor. I wanted to be home, safe, with my dad. I never should have left.
Warm tears seeped into my temples as I closed my eyes and drifted away.
I came to as I was being carried across a crunchy gravel walkway. Outlines of trees rose above me like black clouds. At my side, Clancy’s deep voice whispered, “Praise be, he didn’t sleep with her. It was a holy show back there, though.” He snorted. “That’s what happens when you send a boy to do a man’s job. It’s a good thing, aye, works in our favor. Can’t have the maiden spoiled. This is good.”
An icy fear clutched my belly. I pushed as hard as I could away from the arms that carried me and fell to the gravel. It bit hard into my cheek and lip. I tasted the iron tang of blood. For a moment, I could only see black shoes in front of me, and even that image faded in and out. It had taken everything I had to push away.
I willed my chin upward and tried to focus on the blurry faces. But all of my strength evaporated when I saw the man who had been carrying me. He’d finally caught me. He yanked me to my feet like a rag doll, holding my shoulders so hard I was sure I’d wear the bruise of his fingertips forever. He looked hungrily into my eyes, his smile curling up fast and sinister. “Just a taste? She’s taunted me for months. You’re the only reason I held back.”
“You and I both know you’re lying, Griffin. You didn’t hold back. You’re glowing like a fookin’ candle. You took lives like you were taking seconds at dinner. You took from her in America, and had you gone too far and killed her, I’d have killed you.”
Griffin looked down, contrite, but his hands still clutched me like a vise. “May I?”
Clancy waved him on. Answered with a nonchalant air, as if the man had simply asked for seconds of beef stew.
I was overcome by confusion and the bitter stab of Clancy’s betrayal. I tried to kick my feet but wasn’t even sure they left the ground. My aura yanked violently into Griffin’s. I could not swallow. Could not catch my breath. It was like having an enormous hole ripped into my chest and bleeding into thin air. I was evaporating. Slipping away to the spiraled heavens.
Forty-Two
I woke swallowed up in a plush, comfortable bed. When I opened my eyes, it appeared as though someone had turned the calendar back about five hundred years. An ornate canopy of thick toile swirled overhead, gathering into a gold-sculpted cap in the center. The posts of the bed were wider around than my legs and carved with figures I couldn’t see clearly in the flickering candlelight. I stared groggily at the candle. A dark wick, skirted in blue, rose to a dancing orange flame, fading to white like an aura.
I bolted upright. My head spun, and a wave of nausea rolled in my belly.
The memory of what happened to me, the sick certainty that I wasn’t safe, hit me full force. I jumped out of the bed, fell to my knees, and crawled to the door. Gripping the doorknob, I hauled myself to standing and jiggled the knob. Locked. There were no windows in the room, except for an opening in the wooden door—roughly the size of a torso—which was barred. Another piece of wood on the other side of the bars stopped me from being able to see through.
I fought my rising panic. It made me sick to think of my father’s misery. His fears had come true. Guilt coursed through me. No wonder he’d clipped my wings. Look what I had done at the first hint of freedom.
Clancy…he was supposed to get me out of harm’s way. That’s what Ina told him to do. Put me on a plane to America, back to my dad. But he hadn’t. Instead, he brought me here. He let that man Griffin feed off me.
A sheen of sweat broke out on my upper lip as everything became clear. I’d heard the name Griffin before. He was the family friend Finn had been staying with in America, the one who worked at the hospital. My insides roiled. Was I destined to die like the woman in the park? Griffin stole her flame. Snuffed her out like a candle.