You Are Mine Little Sister (by Syra Tucker) novel Chapter 165

The words reached me but the meaning didn't.

I reached for the hilt of the blade, pulled it out, and made to stab him in the second hip.

"Man, can you hear me? I didn't kill Rali. Please. Please!"

Rali.

My hand stilled.

Something clicked in my head as the name slotted home, turning a lock where I kept the hard things.

Rali.

My gaze climbed from his hip to his face, searching for the words he'd just spoken.

I didn't kill Rali.

"What did you say?"

"I didn't fucking kill her, man! You really thought I'd kill someone as valuable as her? Fucking no. She's alive! And I can help you find her. You need me to do that. So, please, don't kill me. Don't kill me. Please."

The world blurred to a salt-white storm, and then, like subtitles, the sentence walked across his face.

I didn't kill Rali.

She's alive.

I could read it. I could hear it. Belief was the only thing limping.

Inside my skull, the voices went quiet. For the first time since my eyes opened, I couldn't hear them; just the flowery laughter of someone I knew. The frustrated voice of her telling me to stop. Telling me she hated me even as her fists knotted my shirt.

I blinked and she was above me again the way memory had made her: emerald eyes, full lips, perfect nose. She was smiling down at me. Giggling too.

'What do they mean?' she ran her fingers over my tattoos.

'You should know by now, Void, I can't flirt with other men. I can't flirt because you're enough.'

"Void!"

I turned, jerky, to see Eric and Katya sprinting down the slope. Their eyes took in the wreck, the fire, Blayne coughing on dirt, then finally me. Worry clung to them, but when they saw my grip on Blayne, their fear eased into something quieter.

"She's alive." My voice cracked like glass underfoot. "She's alive, Eric. My girl is alive."

Fuck, that didn't even sound like me.

Shock stormed their faces, bafflement and disbelief colliding until they wore both at once. My belly twisted into knots around something heavy, and when it rose up under my ribs, I recognized it—relief. Bone-deep, marrow-deep relief.

A noise with teeth slipped my throat as I dropped to my knees. I let the blade go and hid my face behind blood-slick palms.

My eyes fucking stung. For the first time, they felt like needles were being pierced into them.

"She's alive. I'm going to see her again. She's alive."

I kept repeating the words until I built a box out of them and climbed inside. Until they became the walls around me. Until the morgue in my head shut off its lights and finally hung a CLOSED sign.