My thoughts races—a torrent of guilt, anger, and sorrow.

How did it come to this?

The pursuit of an intruder, a risk to my secrecy, has become a nightmare. I by no means meant for Tia to be in hurt’s method, and now the results of my actions loom over me like a specter.

Frantically, I scan the rocky terrain under, hoping towards hope to catch a glimpse of her. The world narrows to the perimeters of the cliff, the abyss mocking me with its vacancy. Suspended between dread and denial, I’m unwilling to just accept the reality.

The echoes of Tia’s scream linger within the air, haunting me. As I kneel there, on the sting of a precipice, I grapple with a horrible realization that, regardless of my cussed refusal to just accept the wedding I used to be pressured into, I care about Tia.

She’s wormed her method into my coronary heart regardless of my willpower to hate her household—and her by proxy.

I held a treasure in my fingers, simply as her father claimed.

She was mine for the span of 1 excellent second.

And now she’s gone.

24

TIA

“Tia!”

Leo’s voice echoes from the cliff edge above, seeming to snap me out of my surprised state. Was I unconscious for a second after hitting the cliff wall? The reminiscence is fragmented, a blur of impression and disorientation.

I can’t appear to search out the air to reply him. I hit the facet of the cliff with such power that it knocked the wind out of me fully, and now I dangle the wrong way up, the blood dashing to my head and making it practically not possible to catch my breath.

By some coincidence or the watchful eyes of a guardian angel, once I turned to the sound of Leo’s voice, my foot snagged within the roots of a long-dead tree. A tree that I see now, because it hangs over the sting of the cliff beside me.

I don’t know if Leo known as my title in the course of the chase as a result of he knew concerning the cliff and wished to warn me or if he was simply decided to catch as much as me. And proper now, I’m undecided I care. As a result of the truth that he acquired me to show most likely saved my life.

Making an attempt to orient myself, I look on the world under my head and immediately really feel as if I’m going to throw up. A wave of vertigo hits me with alarming power, making the world spin and dip in a dizzying dance. Contemporary panic surges by me as I understand simply how far beneath me strong floor is.

I have to be suspended over 100 toes within the air, with nothing however a couple of roots securing me to the crumbling rocks of the cliffside. Forcing my eyes away from the terrifying sight far under, I lookup on the rotting tree roots.

My tennie-clad foot is totally tangled in them. As I sway within the breeze, a small bathe of pebbles crumble away from the wall, tumbling down on me and coating me with grey mud.

Agony throbs in my leg, and I chunk down on my lip to stifle a cry. My ankle seems to be an unwilling sacrifice I exchanged for my life. It’s possible what took the brunt of my weight to cease me from plummeting to my loss of life. And now it’s buckling below the pressure of holding me.

Past the roots of the tree, an overhang obscures the highest of the cliff, leaving me stranded in a suspended actuality. I’ve no clue how far I fell. And I shudder on the uncertainty of what it’d take to search out my technique to security.

“Tia!” Leo’s voice is sort of a lifeline above.

His shout slices by my terror, and I can’t assist however really feel a surge of aid. He’s nonetheless searching for me. With a shaky voice, I name, “I’m down right here!”

I hear shuffling, as if he’s looking for me from the place he stands, however I’m too nicely hidden.

“How safe are you?”

“I’m caught. My foot acquired caught in a tree root, so I’m simply… hanging. The wrong way up. Please assist me, Leo,” I urge.

Tears sting my eyes as I understand it is perhaps in his finest curiosity to only go away me right here to fall to my loss of life. In spite of everything, he was possible chasing me with the intent to kill me within the first place. And the pause that follows makes me marvel if the identical thought doesn’t cross his thoughts.

“Maintain on. We’ll get you out of there.”

His tone is honest, his concern actual, and I attempt to breathe to calm myself. Perhaps I’m letting my creativeness get the perfect of me. Gritting my enamel, I attempt to ignore the ache in my leg. Blood kilos in my ears, making my head really feel painfully heavy because it clouds my ideas.

A second later, a torrent of curses involves me from above.

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