The Little Dove #3 ✔️

70. Wherefore Art Thou, Edmund?

My eyes darted between his, "I was led here," I whispered to him. Telling him the truth.

He can't stop staring at me intensely, even as his arm strengthens and tightens around me, "I'm so sorry for making you think it was me. I know that's what pushed you away from me. Why could you never trust me, Melanie? I just wish I knew that before I scared you. That was never, ever my intention. I only wanted to protect you." He says to me, eyes never wavering from mine. He doesn't tremble or shiver or shake or groan in pain he should be in right now.

I look down for a second, "I kept thinking it was all you. When you first tried to hypnotize me, I saw those files on your desk. Did you think it was all a game? A goal to see what I knew because that is not how I saw it, Forthright, not by far." I tell him, shaking my head at him.

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, "Of course, I didn't think this was a game. I would never gamble with your life, Melanie. When you spoke with Jewel in her office, she thought I killed them, those girls, but the timing was never right, she couldn't prove anything, and I barely ever had anything to do with her." He tells me, shaking his head with furrowed eyebrows.

I raise an eyebrow, "She'd implied you used her for stress relief?" I question.

He blanches, "What?!" He asks me, sounding incredulous with rotten disbelief.

His eyes dart up and darken when I'm tapped far more harshly in the back of my head than before, "Don't touch her." He snaps at Thea, reaching the back of my head and pulling me closer to him, which I didn't like when the metallic smell of his blood forced a gag to reach my lips, he turns his head down to me, and his breath skims past my ear as he runs his bloodied fingers down my back and up again.

BANG!

I gasp in shock.

I freeze in aghast.

Forthright freezes below me. He gasps, "Melanie." He couldn't connect the dots. He couldn't see past the flaring pain of his wounds.

"No. No. NO!" He squeezes me to him, screaming in my ear when I didn't feel any pain, I didn't feel any different than two minutes ago when the sound of rushing footfalls and a gun being placed back in a holster has me slowly sitting up, even in Forthright's rush of hands looking for the wound he couldn't seem to locate.

When a body drops with a resonating thud behind me, "It's...not me." I whisper to him, staring at Thea as I look over Forthright's shoulder, ready to shout for Edmund when multiple pairs of eyes hold me hostage.

Talon.

He's whose eyes I meet first.

My heart drops in my chest, and my stomach churns.

It wasn't Edmund.

Talon lowers his gun as Dandelion Jewel, looking unharmed, holds a pair of bolt cutters as she moves towards Forthright.

I stand from his wincing form. He stares at me protectively, even when Iris calls, "Finley." She screeches, holding his head in her hands as Lyndon and Erik help release him. I meet Talon's eyes, he stares down at me and surprises me when he locks his arms around me.

I freeze a dozen glaciers when he does. He locks a hand at the back of my hand, fingers entangled in my curls as I trail my eyes past his bicep and towards Thea, who lies dead, only she was dead before her body reached the ground.

Talon shot Thea.

The same Talon is currently hugging me, "Are you alright?" He whispers against me; his voice holds a rough caress as he keeps me locked in an unfamiliar embrace, smelling of pine and cider and ruffling my thoughts. I had wished it were Edmund who locked me in his burly arms. Edmund wasn't with them. The sound of broken chains could be heard as I pull back from him, sliding past his form as I lean down towards Thea's body. Blood oozed out of the penetrating hole into his skull.