The Savage Grace: A Dark Divine Novel(110)

Power surged through my fingers into his chest. Exploding under my hands so forcefully it made me fall backward. I sat up and looked at Jude. He still lay there with a gaping, bloody wound in his chest.

“It’s not enough,” Daniel said. “You can’t heal silver. You can’t save him.”

Jude’s eyes flitted open. He extended a couple of fingers toward me, but he couldn’t lift his hand.

I caressed my fingers down Jude’s face. “Can you hear me? Can you try to transform into a wolf?”

Jude tried to speak, but no words came out. His head nodded ever so slightly.

“Then it is enough,” I said to Daniel.

Jude’s body began to twitch and convulse, trying to make the transformation. I placed my hands on his chest. “It’s going to be okay,” I said, and channeled my energy into him again, giving him enough strength to make the change.

Jude let out a gasp, and the transformation completed. His gray wolf form lay under my arms now. The gaping wound spilling blood into his fur.

“Close your eyes,” I told him.

The wolf’s violet eyes slid shut.

I picked up the broken spear, wrapping my fingers around the shaft. So much energy had drained out of me from trying to heal Jude, I could barely even lift my arm. Daniel clasped his hand over mine so we were both holding the spear.

“Together,” he said.

Hand in hand, we lifted the spearhead and plunged it deep into the bloody hole in the wolf’s chest. Its body convulsed and then lay still.

“I love you,” I whispered to Jude, and pulled the spear out.

I wrapped my arms around the wolf and counted my heartbeats. Thirty of them. Until the wolf melted away and it was my brother’s body that lay in my arms again.

In the end, this was my terrible gift—my savage grace. In order to cure Jude, I had to kill him. Some people I could heal; some people I could restore to life, but for others—like Jude—the only gift I had to give was death.

And in giving it, I’d freed his soul.

Everything was going to be okay.

I held Jude until I was sure he wasn’t coming back. I brushed his hair off his forehead and kissed the scar that was just above his left eyebrow. I laid his head on the ground. Daniel held his hand out to me as if he knew what I needed. He helped me stand, and we leaned our weight into each other for strength. Both injured, but still whole. Together, we stared out at the crowd that had gathered at the edge of the boundary line. Our friends stared back at us: the lost boys—all but Brent. Lisa with Baby James in her arms and Jarem at her side. Gabriel and the other Elders. The Etlu guardians of the ring.

Beyond our friends crowded the spectators—more witnesses who’d watched the hardest moments of my life played out in front of them.

Someone pounded his spear against the ground with three loud smacks, then every member of the Etlu Clan fell to one knee, one fist shoved to the ground and their heads bowed toward us. Some of the other spectators followed suit.

I looked up at Daniel. He squeezed my hand and answered the question I hadn’t asked out loud. “Yes,” he said. “It is finished.”

And we were the last ones standing.





Chapter Thirty-eight


WAKE


THREE DAYS LATER

I sat on the porch swing, staring out at the orange sky that painted a perfect backdrop to the walnut tree where Jude, Daniel, and I had spent so much of our childhood playing up in its branches. I took in deep gulps of early evening air. It was cold and icy in my lungs, but the sharp pain with each breath felt somewhat invigorating.

Like I was actually waking up for the first time in three days.

What had happened in the many hours that followed the end of the ceremony had pretty much been a blur. I’d been exhausted, mentally fighting off the fatigue that tried to overtake my body after having poured so much of my power into Jude in order cure him. But there’d been no time for rest. So many things needed to be done, so many decisions needed to be made, and so many people now looked toward Daniel and me as the ones to make them.

The Elders had wanted to give Jude a warrior’s send-off—burn his body like they did with the five Etlu guardians we’d lost to the Shadow Kings during the ceremony. But I refused, knowing Mom would want Jude to have a proper human funeral. Which had left us to deal with the legal ramifications of his death—to explain what had happened to him in a way the sheriff and the rest of the town could accept. It was Daniel who’d come up with the solution. Jude’s body had still held a terrible gash in his side, where he’d taken a blow from Caleb’s claws.

“Jude died in a wolf attack,” Daniel had said. “We went wolf hunting, looking to win the ten-thousand-dollar bounty. But the wolf attacked us, and Jude, in the process of saving my life, grappled with the wolf, killing it, but was fatally injured by his own weapon. We’ll bring Jude’s body, along with one of the smallest of the wolf carcasses, to the sheriff as proof. Everyone will know that he died to save my life. Everyone should know that.”


The sheriff had bought the story. The mayor declared Jude a town hero for saving us all from the terrible wolf and awarded our family the prize money. Dad donated it to the homeless shelter in Jude’s name. And because of Jude’s sacrifice, the whole town had turned out for tonight’s memorial. I’d been obliged to retell the lie of how Jude had died over and over again in front of the crowd of mingling neighbors, parishioners, and the occasional superhuman werewolf, all here to pay their respects to Jude.