A Mischief in the Woodwork - By Harper Alexander Page 0,130

distraction, rather than the warning it was intended as. Instead of cautioning Victoria to the impending danger, it added to a sense of confusion.

A sickening feeling stayed the blood in my veins as I saw the pillar descending toward the oblivious Victoria. I couldn't rightly say, in that moment, if I lurched forward crying my own alarm or stopped dead in my tracks stayed by smothering dread.

It all happened too fast.

I do know that when Ombri scrambled forward, the pillar nearly toppled and Victoria still unmoved from her endangered pedestal, I had the sense to cry out for her to stop. But it was to be one or the other, really, and as fate would have it – or as little angel Ombri would have it – it was not going to be Victoria.

The little halfbreed scurried up the hillock of debris on her fleet, rubble-savvy legs, reaching for her mistress as the pillar reached an impending angle. I was running then, whether or not I was before, but there were no feet in all the world that could have gotten there in time. It was useless, utterly useless, yet how could one ever just stand and watch as such a thing unfolded before them?

Ombri launched herself from a protruding platform of rubble, leaping at Victoria and toppling her from the hillock. The little slave girl landed all across her belly on top of the pile in the older girl's place, and then the pillar struck down on top of her.

That falling trunk collapsed across her back, splitting in two over the top of the pile. I slid to a shocked halt, my sense returning to me only after the two halves of pillar found their resting places and the extent of the shift happening in the vicinity stilled to a whispery crumbling silence.

My breath caught, then raced back into my lungs. “Ombri!” I cried, and lurched forward once again. I pounded over the fallen gate of the city and rushed up the mound of rubble, striving for the platform that hosted Ombri's unmoving body. Denial swamped me as I rose to her height and saw her there, and I collapsed to my knees beside her, my hands reaching and faltering at once. By the gods, I did not want to hurt her worse. If she wasn't... If she wasn't...

I couldn't think the thought, and in the end my hands went to her, anxiously searching for the signs of life that I was certain still had to be there. "Ombri," I coaxed, my voice quivering. Open your beautiful eyes, little angel. "Ombri, love..."

She was unresponsive under my touch, but I refused to accept that the light that she was could simply go out, so abruptly. She had been a great Shifter in the city – one single downed pillar could surely not snuff her. It couldn't.

But it was not even necessary to check for a pulse, not really – one touch was all I needed, and I felt it. I felt it at first contact in my fingertips, and I denied it.

She's not.

"Ombri."

But denial didn't bring her back.

Only after I had managed to flip her, and dragged her so that I was cradling her head in my lap, did I begin to accept it. For I felt it everywhere I touched her, in every stroke as I ran my hands over her tight brown curls, in every dark flash of essence when my fingers brushed her caramel skin.

She was gone.

The ache of sorrow pinned my heart to the back of my chest, and my eyes fell shut in grief as I bent over her, my shaky fingers retreating to hovering over her in a way that barely came in contact. Suddenly it was as if I couldn't bring myself to touch her, in those moments of raw heartache, lest it become too real or I mar her perfect form.

A second glance, of course, would have told a different story where perfection was concerned, throwing into sharp light the brokenness of her body. The patch of blood that was soaking through the coating of powder.

"What happened?" a grave voice intruded on my private moment of anguish, and I peered with agony through the locks of hair that fell in my face where I was bent over Ombri. Tanen stood at the base of the slope, come after us to help same as I'd gone after Ombri and Victoria myself.

"There was a shift," I managed – somehow both brokenly and numbly at