LIFE AND DEATH (edythe's pov)

Chapter 27 Change

FanFiction

Just In

Community

Forum

More

Solar Midnight: Midnight Sun Reimagined (Life and Death, Book I) by beyondthedawn

 Books » Twilight Rated: T, English, Supernatural & Romance, Beau S., Edythe C., Words: 224k+, Favs: 59, Follows: 36, Published: Dec 26, 2020 15Chapter 27: CHANGE

Carine sat beside me in the backseat of the Cayenne, where the upper half of Beau's body lay across my lap, my hands supporting his head. His splinted leg stretched out across Eleanor's thighs on the other side of me. She wasn't breathing. She stared out the window, trying not to think about the blood drying all over Beau, Carine, and me. Trying not to think about what I had just done. The impossibility of it. The strength she knew she didn't have.

Beau continued to scream and writhe in agony, though his voice was almost totally gone now. He thrashed involuntarily, but we easily kept him contained.

Every time he tried to scream, I apologized over and over again. There was no release, no relief from it, I knew. There was nothing Carine or I could do to counter the blazing fire that ripped its way through his body now.

I remembered the heat of my own transformation all too well. It had begun in the one point of entry where Carine had slashed my hand with her teeth. Like grabbing the end of a white hot branding iron—my automatic response was to drop the scorching thing in my hand. But there was nothing there in my empty palm. The burning grew from there, rose and peaked again as it raced its way up my arm.

When I'd felt the flames reach my chest, finding their way into the chambers of my heart, I'd wanted to claw my chest open and rip it out of me—anything to get rid of the torture.

I'd begged Carine to make it stop just as Beau had. I screamed at her to let me die. The flames burst their way outward from my heart, spreading impossibly hot to my shoulders and stomach, scalding their way up my throat, licking my face.

All I had wanted was to die, to have never been born. The whole of my existence did not outweigh the pain, wasn't worth living through it for one more agonizing second—and that was exactly how I felt now, watching it all happen to Beau.

This was my fault. I had condemned him to my underworld for all eternity. I'd sealed his fate and destroyed his life forever.

I tried to focus on something else while I wallowed.

Eleanor's thoughts were currently distracted as well as she mulled over her dissatisfaction with the fight. Because, honestly. She'd had the tracker. Totally contained, though the tracker fought and squirmed and thrashed to avoid Eleanor's crushing arms. There was no chance any of this struggle could have helped her, and Eleanor was already breaking her when Jessamine lunged into the blood-drenched room.

Jessamine, mangled and ferocious, eyes sharp and empty at the same time, looking like some forgotten goddess or incarnation of war, projecting an aura of pure violence. And the tracker had stopped trying. In that fraction of a second when she saw Jessamine (for the first time, but Eleanor didn't know that), she'd surrendered to her fate. No matter that her fate was sealed once Eleanor had gotten her hands on her, this was what demoralized her.

It was driving Eleanor crazy.

Someday soon I would have to describe to Eleanor what she'd looked like in the clearing and why. I doubted anything else would soothe the sting.