Proof of Life (The Potentate of Atlanta #4) - Hailey Edwards Page 0,39

shoes, and I almost couldn’t get back up, but I had to move.

It wasn’t like Addie would have been alone. Boaz would have been right there with her.

The one person who had loved me unconditionally, who had never hurt me, never hated me, was gone.

Part of me withered and died on the spot. I might not be a Pritchard anymore, but Boaz was my brother.

My brother was dead.

Eight

Midas held Hadley’s hand to leash her, but she tugged against him, blind in her grief and rage. She made it onto the sidewalk before elbowing him, twisting free of his hold, and running straight for the plume of smoke on the pink-and-orange horizon. He allowed her to maintain the lead, but he kept close enough to watch her back.

He wasn’t surprised when Bishop jogged from an alley wreathed in shadows to join him.

“This is going to get ugly fast.” He cut Midas a look. “Can you restrain her?”

His feral half took orders from her, which meant she could free herself, but that abuse of power sat wrong with her. Usually. “Yes.”

“Good.” Bishop frowned at the back of her head. “Poor kid can’t catch a break.”

Hadley was a fighter, but even the strongest could get knocked down until they could no longer rise.

“Will Linus come?” Midas wondered. “Does he know yet?”

“He’s already on his way.” Bishop slowed his pace. “He and Boaz had issues, but he’s worried for Hadley. He doesn’t want her to face this alone.” He came to a stop as they reached the scorched restaurant. “Grier is with him.”

“That means Lethe will come too.”

Grier’s power made her unique, but it also made her a target. Lethe would never allow her best friend to leave Savannah without a guard. Despite their troubled histories, Grier had grown up next door to Hadley and Boaz. She had loved him for most of her life, and she would mourn him. Deeply.

Hadley would need Grier to help make sense of this shared loss. And Addie… Midas wasn’t sure how Hadley would process the loss of the woman who had welcomed her into sisterhood with open arms.

The deaths of Mr. Whitaker and Matron Pritchard left Midas uncertain as to their impacts. Hadley hadn’t been close to her “father,” but she liked him. The woman who had birthed her and then thrown her away rather than deal with the scandal fueled by her crimes was another matter.

It didn’t mean Hadley wouldn’t grieve her, but he had no expectations as to how her sorrow might manifest.

The smoke burned Midas’s sinuses and made him cough as he fought through it to reach Hadley.

As wind teased the edges of the black plumes, Midas understood why she hadn’t rushed the fire.

The restaurant was ash. Nothing but ash. The magical fire had devoured it whole.

Once that registered, Hadley hit her knees, but she didn’t scream as Claudia had done, and there was no sense of defeat about her. No one could see her and not understand she was mourning, but no one would dare engage her with that murderous wrath twisting her face either.

There were no words to make this better, no magic to bring them back, no miracle waiting in the wings.

All Midas could do was kneel beside her as her fists clenched and her jaw ground with white-hot rage.

Ambrose whirled in a circle over her head, a funnel of dark intent, and Midas swore the shadow cast him a worried glance as if he too were concerned for her. But that couldn’t be right. If she was close to breaking, Ambrose ought to be rejoicing.

“You don’t need to be here for this.” Bishop crouched on her other side. “Let Midas take you home.”

Voice distant, eyes vacant, she stared ahead, seeing nothing. “This is exactly where I need to be.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.” Bishop reached in his pocket and, moving faster than Midas credited him for, stabbed her in the upper arm with a hypodermic needle. “Midas, you might want to catch her.”

A red haze blinded him, and his teeth ached to clamp shut over Bishop’s throat, but Hadley’s spine curved as she began to collapse. Midas made his choice, the only choice, and grabbed her shoulders before she kissed the pavement. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Above them, Ambrose popped like a balloon after a pin pierced its surface and vanished from sight.

“You want to go next?” He produced a second, larger needle. “I came loaded for bear, which in this case means gwyllgi. I put