Devil's Lover

Chapter 6

“This is why I’m a cat person,” Celine said to Morgan, swallowing back bile at the sight of the hounds tearing down their victim on the fuzzy screen. The camera moved slightly, blurring the image, but Celine could still see the milky-white eyes of the dogs and their ratty fur.

He looked just as horrified. “Those dogs don’t look right. Garcia, can we get a clearer look?”

“… Oh man. Well, maybe, but I’d have to get right up close and personal with…”

“Wait.” There was a rustle of movement behind them and the detective stepped forward, frowning in concentration. “Ah hell, I know those hounds. They attacked someone a few months ago. They looked sick then, but now… they look…”

“Dead,” Hotch finished. “Necromancy. Who owns the dogs?”

The detective paled and somehow, somehow, Celine knew what he was going to say before he said it. “Hankel. Tobias Hankel.”

Necromancy.

Reid.

As one, their palms began to burn.

Time turned strange. Thick and syrupy, like they were trying to move very quickly through honey. The car ride out to Hankel’s farm lasted days or maybe minutes. The time it took for Reid’s phone (Reid’s phone, not Casper’s, because she couldn’t think about what could be lost here) to ring out was only seconds.

“You’ve reached Doctor Casper Reid. I’m not available so please leave a detailed message, and I’ll return your call.” It was the fourth time she’d called and Reid’s voice was beginning to take a mocking kind of tone, almost spiteful: “You’ve reached Doctor Casper Reid. I’m not available because I’m busy trying to get myself killed. Please leave a detailed message, and I won’t return your call, ever, because I’ll be dead.”

Morgan was calling JJ. “It says there’s no signal. Celine? Did you get Reid? Celine?”

“No,” she said calmly. “No answer from Reid either.”

If she focused on JJ, her palm burned hot. That was a comfort. She was alive. Hurt, maybe, certainly terrified at the very least. But alive. If she focused on Reid it burned as well, right up until it didn’t. She kept focusing on him until, suddenly, he was gone. Not there anymore. The burning remained for JJ, but he was gone. She stared at her sigil like it had betrayed her.

It wasn’t cold. He wasn’t dead. They weren’t going to find him sprawled on the ground with a bullet in his heart and his sigil black and empty. He was just… gone.

“What the f**k?” Morgan asked, glancing down at his hand in confusion. “Hotch, what the hell, I can’t feel Reid. I can’t even tell where he is!”

Hotch didn’t answer, but the car shuddered under them as he pressed his foot down.

Celine was going to kick Reid’s ass when they found him.

Out the car. Weapon in hand, runes active. Morgan shifted next to her and, at any other time, that would be fascinating. A powerfully built boxer with long legs and a barrel chest charged towards the house, nose down and tail held stiffly out behind him. Gideon followed Morgan, his own weapon holstered and face calm.

“Ryder with me. The barn,” Hotch said.

Celine followed. She was calm. She was hyper-vigilant. Everything was stark, vivid. The acrid smell of something bitter burned nearby, a faint rotting scent mixed with wet fur. The mud sucked at her shoes and made every step an effort. Hotch moved to one side of the door and waved her through into the barn, covering her.

The first thing she knew was blood. Blood on the floor, blood under her feet; pools and splashes of it. JJ in the middle, on her knees. Alone. The hounds, dead around her, stiff and broken by the ice that had torn through them. The second thing she knew was cold, because as soon as she took a sharp breath of shock at seeing her friend, the frigid air bit at her skin and froze the saliva in her mouth. Cold fog misted from an even colder throat as she breathed, and Hotch gasped in pain as it hit him as well.

“JJ,” he said. JJ didn’t move. Celine stepped forward, waving him back, because she didn’t need him walking towards a panicked elf and ending up having his blood chilled in his veins. The blood crunched under her foot, frozen into an unfamiliar texture.

“JJ,” she repeated, her voice strong. Fog puffed in front of her mouth. “Where’s Reid?”

“Tobias Hankel is the unsub,” JJ replied, her voice monotonous. “We thought he was a witness.”

“We know,” Celine soothed, inching closer. JJ looked up, and Celine hissed in a sharp breath at the sight of the blood on her shirt and the vacant look in her blue eyes.

“I’m calling an ambulance,” Hotch murmured, backing up to the door and slipping out.

“Where’s Reid?” Celine asked, pleading now. JJ stared uncomprehendingly at her.

“I had to freeze them,” she murmured, gesturing to the dogs. “My gun didn’t work. They just kept coming. They were already dead. They just… they tore her apart and my gun didn’t work.”

“JJ, look at me.” Celine crouched in front of her and touched her arm. It was bitterly cold, searing her fingertips. Like touching a steel surface in winter. As soon as she touched JJ’s skin, the burning in her palm ceased. “Where’s Reid?”

JJ blinked and looked down at her hand, her expression clearing slightly. “What? We split up. He went around back—you can’t find him?”

Celine was already up, charging past Hotch. There was the sound of scrambling behind her; JJ following. Hotch caught JJ’s arm as she stumbled, her face deathly pale and limbs shaking. Celine tried to spare some concern for her, but she couldn’t. She had to compartmentalize. The job came first.

“Ryder,” he said. His face was grim. “Reid followed Hankel into the cornfield.”

Gideon was right behind him. He reached a hand out and touched her elbow, a soothing gesture. Soothing. He was being soothing, and Reid was missing. The cold she felt now had nothing to do with JJ’s spellwork. “There’s a spell-snare out there,” Gideon said quietly in his ‘family of victims’ voice, and Celine could see Hotch looking strangely at him. “Keyed to Reid. This was a trap. He’s taken Reid. Hankel has Reid.”

“Okay,” Celine said, nodding firmly. “Alright. So, we do our jobs, and we get him back.” She walked past them with her head held high.

The job absolutely always came first.

Garcia looked terrified and smaller than Celine had ever seen her. Almost as though she was withdrawing into herself to protect herself from the horror of this day. She stared at the bank of computers in Hankel’s home, clutching her bag close. “I can try,” she whispered softly. “But Hotch… sir. My power comes from the Bureau. Out here? I’ve got nothing. Nada. I’m a plant in a box cut off from the sun. I don’t know what I can do.”

“You can find him,” Hotch said firmly. “Same as the rest of us. We are going to find him, Garcia. Hankel’s computer is an extension of his brain, we need you to unpack it.”

“Oh god,” she murmured, shuddering with horror. Celine suppressed a shudder of her own. It was bad enough being in Hankel’s home, surrounded by piles of old journals and dust and filth. She couldn’t imagine stepping into his head.

Then, Garcia straightened. Sometimes, Celine forget how strong the people around her were.

“Okay,” Garcia said, nodding. “Right. Let’s bring our boy home.”

“Atta-girl,” Gideon called out from the next room.

“Oh my god.” Garcia’s shriek roused them all, every head turning to her. She was standing, her form flickering wildly, panicking. “Hotch, Hotch, Hotch,” she yammered, turning and holding her hands to her mouth. “I’ve got… oh god. Emails. I found emails. On his father’s username.”

They all stared at her, waiting. Celine almost giggled. Almost. It was like they were waiting for the punchline to a really bad joke, one that just kept on keeping on. When it came, it was a punch to the gut for all of them, but none so much as Hotch. Celine hid her own horror behind a practised mask, watching their leader’s shoulder slump slightly as though the weight of all this had just fallen squarely onto his shoulders. He didn’t say anything, but they could all see my fault, my fault in the lines of his shoulders and spine. It occurred to her that if they didn’t save their friend, she might break, but so would Hotch and they might never be able to put him back together.

“They don’t say much. Just… just plans to lure us out here. The BAU. Us, crimes to lure us here and information, lots of it, on… Reid. It’s all on Reid. Stuff that we don’t even know.” Her voice hitched, and she was looking directly at Hotch. “They’re just signed ‘The Reaper.’”

She came up behind JJ when the woman was staring into the mirror in Hankel’s bathroom as though she hated the person reflected back at her, and that was a mistake, because JJ almost shot her.

“It’s me,” she breathed, staring down the barrel of JJ’s service weapon. She supposed she should be glad JJ hadn’t frozen her on the spot. She’d never been a fan of the cold. “Are you alright?”

JJ lowered her gun, but the wild look didn’t leave her pale eyes. Celine could see the guilt on every line of her innocent face, even under the make-up that the elf wore to make herself look older; to add years where other women would try to mask them. “I’m fine,” she stammered, holstering her weapon slowly and running her newly free hand through her damp blonde hair. “You just… scared me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Celine?” The softness was gone from JJ’s voice now, replaced by a bitterness that Celine couldn’t work out if it was aimed at her or at JJ herself. “How come this isn’t bothering you?”

You have no idea how much I’m bothered, Celine thought wildly for a second, the firm shield against the pain of this day she’d erected buckling and cracking down the middle, threatening to dump it all on her before she was ready to deal with it. “What do you mean?”

JJ’s expression was cold. “You think I don’t know that you’ve been seeing him? Spence?  For what, two months now?”

Celine didn’t feel anything. No panic at being caught, no relief at being free of the lies. Nothing. “Three. Kind of.” Four months since I met him; fourteen weeks since I’ve known him; twelve weeks since I first kissed him; what feels like forever that I’ve loved him.

“And he’s gone, god knows where. Anything could be happening to him, and you haven’t faltered. You didn’t flinch when we found the spell-snares. You didn’t react when we found Foyet’s emails. You haven’t… Christ, Celine, I’m here trying not to fall apart, and you haven’t even said his name since you found me in the barn.”

“She’s right,” said a low voice behind them. Hotch. s**t. “You haven’t blinked once. Celine, compartmentalizing is one thing. But if you’re emotionally compromised and you try to push it all away, ignore it, it’s going to cripple you right when you need to be clear-headed.”

“I’m fine, Hotch,” she said, and it wasn’t a lie. Not yet. She was. “I can do this. My feelings for… my feelings have nothing to do with it. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think I could do my job, no matter what happens in the field.” Besides, we’re all emotionally f*****g compromised¸ was what she actually wanted to say, but one look at his ashen skin and eyes that were red-rimmed with exhaustion and guilt quickly deflected that desire.

Then, Garcia screamed.

“He’s been beaten,” JJ gasped. Celine said nothing. They all stared at the screens, and she knew they all took different information from the nightmarish images projected to them. She stared and memorised every bruise, every cut, every injury this fucker had done to him. She’d repay it tenfold.

“I’m gonna put this guy’s head on a stick,” snarled Morgan, and she could hear the rumbling growl of the dog in his voice.

Celine moved her gaze down him, over the mud on his clothes and the way he had his left arm tucked against his stomach protectively. Right on down to the runes surrounding him. The circle. She studied it. Recognised it.

And then she almost vomited from the agony of it.

“I can’t track him,” Garcia gasped helplessly, right as Gideon sucked in a breath that was almost a groan and said, “That’s a binding circle.”

“Don’t,” Reid groaned, and the fear in his voice was audible and choking. He backed away from the camera, the person behind it, his foot scuffing the side of the circle and stopping like it had hit a brick wall instead of a roughly painted line on the floor. “Please, don’t. I don’t want to be bound to you; you’re nothing more than a poacher!”

When the voice began to speak, none of them reacted at first.

“Prieumaton dominator virtutis nomine et in palatia caeli, benedicat tibi…”

“Celine,” Hotch said, turning his head slightly. “Celine, what’s he saying? What’s he doing?”

Celine didn’t answer, her eyes locked on the sight of Casper’s knees buckling, his eyes widening in shock and dread as the paint below him began to writhe and bubble. It came alive, leeching up from the ground with long oily tendrils, and slithered towards him, closing the circle in around his inexplicably bare feet.

“…et domos tuas sedes gaudium et virtutem et ligabunt te in fundo Abaddon usque ad diem iudicii non erit finis...”

Casper screamed, dropped his glamour, and surged the circle with the full extent of his magic, the camera crackling with the power that lashed the room. Wings outstretching and whirling in place, the air buckled in the circle even as white lightning danced out of his fingertips in a funnel around him.

The circle bent. Cracked. Strained, almost broke.

Held.

“Celine?”

Her voice was lost, a whisper. She couldn’t think about the words as they fell unbidden from her lips. Casper screamed again, nothing human about the sound anymore as it ripped from his chest, the circle reaching his legs and smoking as it touched his bare skin. “I bind thee in the depth of Abaddon, to remain until the Day of Judgment whose end cannot be.”

“... Ignis et sulphur, et ligabunt te in freta veneno mixtum igne et sulphure: veni foras ergo audieritis vocem meam et ante hunc circulum...”

The circle thickened, oozing up from the ground as a gelatinous sludge, thick and dark as old blood. It seeped up his legs despite his desperate attempts to throw it off, reached his knees, his waist, his stomach, his magic faltered, he faltered…

“And I bind thee in the fire of sulphur mingled with poison and the seas of fire and sulphur: come, forth, therefore, obey my power and appear before, this circle.”

“He’s panicking,” Gideon snapped, his voice cracking. “He’s going to burn himself out; he’s making it easier for him!”

“He’s losing.” JJ covered her eyes.

His arms. Twining around his wrists, slicing the skin, blood mixing with the secretions that covered him. His magic stopped, he stopped, his scream petering off into a sob that was both wrecked and terrified beyond comprehension. It was a noise she wanted to forget as soon as she heard it.

She never would.

“Et venit in nomine sanctorum Zabaoth Domine Amioran. Veni ! Ego enim sum Dominus incitat te qui.”

“Therefore, come forth in the name of the Holy Ones Zabaoth, Adonai, Amioran. Come! for I am Adonai who stir thee up.” She was going to be sick. She was going to fall. She was falling, except her knees were locked and she hadn’t moved, the only one who wasn’t reacting as even his moans stopped and his eyes turned blank and shattered, broken glass, reflecting nothing and everything all at once.

“Et ligabunt te exibunt ad me et custodiunt ! Mea sunt enim omnia corpore et anima, et vincula franguntur.”

He closed his eyes.

And I bind thee, come forth, belong to me and obey! For you are mine, in body and soul, and your ties are broken.

He fell, and the circle closed on him.

“I thought you said binding takes hours.” Morgan was the first to speak after the camera switched off. They had all moved away from the room, splintering, separating to deal with their grief alone. Except Celine. She stayed by the screens, staring at them. Trying to push the image of him away from where it had been burned into her retinas and her mind.

“It does.” Gideon was sitting at the table, his head in his hands. Beaten. The great Jason Gideon, f*****g beaten. “That was the last stage. It was still fast, considering Reid’s reserves. He must have something that weakened him somehow. There’s still time though—these spells take days, even weeks, to truly settle. Reid can still fight this, and he is stronger than Hankel. Hankel will not break him.”

“There’s still time,” Celine parroted, her lips numb around the words; the first time she’d spoken since the screen had gone black and taken his image with it. Their eyes on her, she could feel them burning. Distantly, she recognised the symptoms of shock. She was surprised no one else had yet.

Her hands shook slightly, very slightly.

“Oh s**t, Celine.” Morgan. Touching her. She pulled away, tried to snarl at him to f**k off, but her mouth and brain weren’t speaking to each other anymore around the mess Reid had made of her thoughts. “Hey, hey. It’s okay. Come on. Come here.” He pulled her close, and she stopped struggling and let her head fall against his chest for a second, just a second, and tried to see if his heart beat in the same rhythm as Casper’s did when they were together.

She couldn’t remember.

They received a second video. Celine hung back, torn between wanting to see him again and not wanting to know what he looked like when his soul was broken. Seeing him won out, and she walked into the room on lead-filled legs to find a nightmare.

“Obey me!” shrieked a madman, and Reid didn’t even look up from where he was curled on the floor with his knees to his chest, his head bowed. His arms gleamed slickly with red and gold; blood and binding. She wanted to tear at it with her nails, claw it off of him, feel the pain as it tore at her fingers as she freed him.

“No,” he said quietly. He rippled with pain as he said it.

“Choose one to die! Your seven team members—the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound them. The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth. Now choose one!”

“Go to hell.” The last time Celine had heard that tone, he’d been stubbornly refusing to eat the food she’d given him with the chopsticks she was trying to force him to use. She’d hidden every fork in her home, and he’d ended up eating with his fingers and smirking the whole time. She remembered him dropping a noodle on his shirt and leaving a smear of peanut butter sauce on the collar; remembered helping him scrub it off, the soap on their fingers, on his chin when he’d itched at it, on her chin when she’d kissed him…

It hurt to remember.

Pick one, Celine thought, and she could see the thought mirrored in every face in the room with her as the ripples shuddered over their friend again, and he still resisted. Pick me, Casper. Please oh god please pick me. Don’t let him hurt you.

“In extremo iudicio iudico iustitiam tuam vultum quia tu legem istam quae non possum, et non audivit Dominus Deus, et non audivit quod victus spiritus invoco soni et potens, qui mitto.”

Reid looked up and snarled, baring sharp teeth and twisting his face into a mockery of the Casper they knew. Even in her fear, she couldn’t be prouder of him. “Kill me,” he spat, and the pride vanished like a candle being snuffed. Don’t you f*****g dare, you f*****g bastard. You don’t get to die yet. We’re not done yet. JJ looked at her. She may have said that out loud, judging from the stunned look on the elf’s face. She couldn’t bring herself to care.

“Ardens in igne, cuius finis non erit et proiciam te in corde maris tormentorum, ex quibus non resurget donec venias meos visita me pacis amicitia juxta. Circulum in momento in similitudinem non timore hominum vel animalium omnium filiorum hominum super terram. Audite vocem meam.”

She wasn’t translating that for them, but her face must have shown her horror even as Reid screamed again, a dying scream, the ripples turning to waves that seared his skin as they passed over it. He buckled, clutched at his stomach: kept. f*****g. Screaming.

I burn thee in fire whose end cannot be and I cast thee down unto the seas of torment, out of which thou shalt not rise until thou come to my eyes: visit me in peace: be friendly before the circle in the moment in the likeness of a man not unto the terror of the sons of men the creatures or all things on the face of the earth. Obey my power.

She might have stepped back or she might have covered her ears, but she wasn’t sure anymore as he vomited from the pain; red on his mouth, the floor, and he fell again, but this time he wasn’t still when he hit the ground. Seizing, his body shuddering and eyes rolling back so that only the whites showed between uneven lids. She couldn’t make a noise, a scream blocking her throat too large to escape, and he was dying.

“He’s killing him!” shrieked Garcia. Her form shifted, she reached for the screen. She was going to try and travel through it, find him herself. She couldn’t. She was too weak outside the Bureau, it would destroy her. They’d lose them both. Morgan caught her arm before she could try it, dragging her away. His turn to hold her now, to cover her face so she couldn’t see Casper Reid choose to die rather than hurt them.

He can’t actually die, Celine thought as he stilled, one hand still twitching sporadically and a mixture of blood and spit oozing from the corner of his slack mouth. The mouth that she’d tasted. The mouth that she’d kissed, had kissed her back. The mouth that she loved, and that was now turning blue as he stopped breathing. He wouldn’t die. He wouldn’t, he knows how much that would hurt us. Besides, logically, how could this be the end of them when they’d barely even begun?

But he did.

He came back. He was dead, by Celine’s count, for just under four minutes. He died on that floor, the life leaving his body, and he came back. Everyone else was happy, relieved, except Celine.

Except Gideon.

Because he was dead and then he wasn’t, cast into torment until Hankel called him back, and a demon was bound to no one as strongly as to one who drew them back from oblivion. There was a reason necromancy was so loathed. At least death was some kind of release, even if every part of her rebelled against the thought of him hollow and rotting.

“Choose one to die,” said the voice they all despised again, and this time Reid barely reacted. He blinked, disoriented, his movements sluggish. He tried to stand, but his hand slipped on the slick floor, clumsy, and he whimpered as his palm smacked the ground wetly. He had always been a bastion of movement before, fingers twitching and feet jiggling perpetually, but now he’d turned still and slow. A stranger in his body.

“Aaron Hotchner,” he said finally, and Celine thought for a moment that she might break with him. “He’s a classic narcissist. He always puts himself before the team. Genesis 23:4: ‘Let him not deceive himself and trust in emptiness, vanity, falseness, and futility, for these shall be his recompense. For god's will’.”

The screen went black again and Hotch snapped, close enough to shattering himself that Celine could see herself reflected in his dark eyes: “I’m not a narcissist!”

“He’s not himself, Hotch,” Gideon said in a low voice. “Hankel’s in his head, you can’t…”

“No, stop. Reid and I argued about the definition of classic narcissism, he knew I would remember that. And he quoted Genesis, chapter 23, verse 4. Read it.” He was breathing quickly, eyes glittering, wild with the olive branch Reid had just extended to them. “‘I am a stranger and a sojourner with you. Give me property, forbear a place among you that I may bury my dead out of my sight.’ He wouldn't get it wrong unless it was on purpose.”

Hope flared.

“He’s still him,” Celine breathed, and the numbing, choking horror of the past two days dispelled. “He’s still him in there, he’s given us a clue. He’s telling us where he is.”

They were bringing him home.

“He’s in a graveyard,” Hotch declared, and the fission of anger and furious excitement that rushed through them all ignited Celine’s nerves and made her hands itch for her gun, for her runes, for action. “We’re bringing him home, everyone. Now.”

As one, they moved. A team again.

A team with all their hearts tied to the one empty space in the room.

They found him standing alone in the graveyard, and when he looked at them approaching him it was with hope in his eyes. At least, that was what she thought at first, her heart almost twisting out of her ribcage with shock and delight at the sight of him. She sped up almost subconsciously into a jog. Then, someone’s flashlight beam, probably Hotch’s since he was right behind her, illuminated Reid’s face properly, and she saw what she’d taken for hope was actually a fragmented kind of resignation.

He raised his hand as though to salute them, his eyes glazed and skin grey except for where he gleamed gold. His wings drooped from his back limply, trailing in the dirt, blood and filth coating him. They were close enough that she could see the pinpoint dots of his pupils in her vision, not reacting to the lights that danced on his sallow features.

“I knew you’d understand,” Casper said, his voice harsh and edged with the sound of his former screams. He was looking at Hotch, who froze.

“Casper,” Hotch murmured, and took a single step towards him. None of them moved or breathed. The sound of his shoe on the loamy earth echoed. “We can undo this.”

Reid ignored him, looking at her and smiling faintly; a f*****g mockery of a smile with too many teeth, nothing like him, and she wanted to reel back from it. There was a look in his expression that suggested he was about to start pleading. “Hey, Em. If you get the chance, take the shot. I’m sorry.” A touch in her mind followed that and she opened to him without thinking. The rush of torment that hit her almost brought her down; his thoughts a disordered whirlwind of I don’t want this help me please I’m not weak don’t let this happen almost drowned out by a background hum of your ties are broken your ties are broken your ties are broken.

“I love you,” he whispered, and she felt the phantom touch of wind on her lips, desperate and fleeting. “Goodbye…”

“Don’t you f*****g dare!” she screamed, knowing what he was going to do before he did it. She couldn’t hear through the rushing of blood in her ears, and Hotch didn’t reach her before Casper threw a half-hearted attack in her direction, barely managing not to miss. She could have shot him in that moment, but she didn’t. She could have blocked his spell, but she didn’t. That’s what he wanted. He wanted Gideon or Hotch to take the shot, to stop him, to end this.

She welcomed the pain it brought when it struck her. Instead of getting up, she lay there and listened to the sound of everything ending.

It turned out Sergio had been wrong. Casper absolutely could beat Gideon, if given the chance. Beat Gideon and vanish to wherever he’d been told to go, leaving them bruised and battered. But alive. She wondered if Hankel had told him to leave them alive, or if Reid had just earned himself another punishment. He could have killed them.

She had a vague memory of looking up and seeing Casper dodge JJ’s defensive spell easily, colliding with Hotch, the two of them locked together in a parody of an embrace with Casper’s mouth close to Hotch’s ear. She wondered what he was saying, if he was saying anything. They fell, Hotch cried out, blood, Casper vanishing. For a moment, when Hotch had fallen, she’d believed he was dead. She’d thought Casper had killed him.

He hadn’t. Hotch had gotten up again, shaken and pale. Casper hadn’t even hurt him that bad, any of them. The bruises on their hearts would linger a long time after their skin healed. Every spell he threw missed by inches, every sweeping attack glanced off of them instead of striking. She thought he might have been crying, but she couldn’t think about that without her heart breaking. And when he’d left… “Don’t look for me. It’s what he wants.”

She was sitting on the ground, in the dirt, knees to her chest just like Casper had sat, and she was vulnerable, so f*****g vulnerable like this, but it didn’t matter because the one thing she knew could destroy her had already happened. She was hurt, she could feel pain. Later, she was going to have to deal with that, but at the moment it was eclipsed by the overwhelming agony of knowing that she’d failed him. Hankel had bound him, trapped him, taken him.

Nails cut into her hands as she clenched them, pressing her eyes into the bones of her knees so hard that red dots flashed on her lids. It hurt, thinking of the begging way he’d looked at her, thinking of him alive or dead or trapped or just not there anymore, thinking of that final illusory kiss. There might not be another.

“Celine.” A hand on her leg: Gideon. His voice ragged, breathing heavily. He’d taken hits as well. More than any of them. And he could have stopped this as well, she wasn’t the only one with a clear shot, but he hadn’t. She wasn’t the only one who had found herself to be weak when she had thought that she was strong. “Get up. Let’s get you checked out, come on.”

“He’s gone,” she mumbled into her legs, and for the first time since they’d realized they’d sent Casper and JJ into the lion’s mouth, she felt tears burn at the back of her eyes and her throat closing, choking her. “He’s gone.”

He was gone.