Death wasn’t chaos.
It wasn’t screaming and brimstone, there was no fire or life flashing before my eyes.
It just was.
It was quiet, but not peaceful, painful but numb.
I expected more.
But I knew this was it.
The knife had punctured a lung, I couldn’t breathe, my chest cavity was filling with blood, stealing my oxygen, but I wasn’t sure which would kill me first. I didn’t know how the body worked. Would it be from suffocation? Choking on my own blood? Or would I bleed out first?
There was a lot of blood.
Tobias still stood close. Watching me. Not moving, just watching and behind him, frozen, was Eleanor.
She needed to run.
She had to live at least.
I may have failed, but Isobel wouldn’t, and she would get what she needed and Eleanor, my sweet Eleanor would live. She had to.
I’ve made mistakes. But she wasn’t one of them. A weakness but never a mistake.
And I understood. I know why she did it. And that’s okay.
I hold her eyes, the pain in them evident even though there are no tears, no words or sounds. It’s chaos around us but there’s only her.
I try to suck in a breath, but I can’t. I can’t breathe.
My knees buckle and I go down, hitting the floor with a thud though the pain doesn’t register.
I’d be dead soon.
She should know by now Tobias has no intention of letting Tate go. No intention of letting Eleanor go either. She had no choice but to run.
I look at her face one last time, committing it to my memory, so it can be the last thing I see. And once that’s done, once I’ve seen it, I try to give her a smile that fails and simply say, “Run.”
My eyes close in relief when she does.
And then I let my body go. A darkness sweeps in, warm and inviting and that’s all I see as I plunge into it.