I started to run, slipping on the sands of the creek’s bank. Where the canyon widened slightly, we found Gabrielle.
She lay in a crumpled heap in the sand, facedown, the sagging branches of a cottonwood shielding her. The shirt and jeans she’d taken from my room in Many Farms were tattered and creased with dirt.
Mick was on his knees beside her when I reached them, and I put out my hand, my heart pounding, and gently turned her over.
Gabrielle was alive, awake, and weeping. She cracked open her eyes when I rolled her onto her back, her body shaking with sobs.
“Janet.” The word was weak and cracked.
I gathered Gabrielle against me, much as my father had cradled me. She lay limply in my grasp, her head on my shoulder, her strength gone.
“He broke me in two,” she said in a trembling whisper. “He took me apart, and I couldn’t stop him.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I held Gabrielle while she continued to weep, terrified and frail. My crazy little sister, so dangerous and unpredictable, was now pathetic and frightened in my arms.
Mick laid a soothing hand on her back, but I knew he was also testing her aura. His eyes were grim in the light of Colby’s renewed fire.
Mick sent me a nod without a word, confirming our fears. Emmett had stolen Gabrielle’s magic.
We got Gabrielle up the trail, she shaking and barely able to move. Drake helped her most of all, half carrying her to the top in his strong arms.
Colby offered to fly her back. Drake relinquished her and Colby lifted Gabrielle gently, then took off. While I knew that Colby could fly in erratic and stomach-dropping patterns, this time he only sailed low and straight the twenty miles back to the hotel.
Pamela refused to put her fate in the talon of a dragon, so she ran back while Mick flew with me, followed by Drake.
It took only a few minutes for Mick to reach the hotel again, even if he had to land far enough away so he had room to change back to his human form.
By the time I made it inside, Colby had taken Gabrielle to my bedroom and laid her on the bed, removed her boots, and pulled blankets over her. Colby watched her with intense concern, as did Drake, who strode in behind Mick.
Gabrielle’s face was wan, defeat in her eyes. I sank down to the edge of the bed and took her hand.
“Gabrielle,” I said, my voice as stern as my grandmother’s. “I’m going after him for doing this. Trust me.”
Gabrielle’s fingers were limp in mine. “It’s my fault, Janet,” she said, her voice a weary scratch. “I’m sorry.”
“How is Emmett hurting you your fault?” I asked angrily.
From the shamed look on her face, I had another insight into my sister. I remembered my dream of her father and Anna, the snarling man and the woman who only wanted a child to love.
I remembered her father threatening to kill her stepmother and how he’d wanted to leave Gabrielle in the woods to die—a stark contrast to my father, who’d fiercely protected me. I’d known kids who had been abused by parents who’d come to believe the abuse was their fault. Gabrielle had the same worried look on her face—if she’d only been good, she’d not have been hurt.
“It’s not your fault,” I told her firmly. “Emmett is a bastard who will do anything to get anything he wants. It has nothing to do with what you did.”
“But it does.” Gabrielle’s fingers trembled as she closed them around mine. “I was going to kill him for you. I snitched a shard from the mirror when Fremont and Don were moving it before the spell. They never saw me. I slipped away while everyone was concentrating on Flora, and called Emmett. I told him I had a shard, that I could help him take the mirror from you, that I hated you enough to help him.” Gabrielle’s mouth shook, her eyes red with weeping. “I wanted to trick him into meeting me alone, away from the vortexes, and kill him for you. I wanted you to be proud of me.” She echoed the words from my dream, her voice as sad.
“Oh, sweetie,” I said. I squeezed her hand between mine and lifted it to my heart. “Sweetie, next time you want to be brave, tell me. We’ll rip him apart together.”
She shook her head. “He met me as planned, but he smacked me down with magics I’d never seen before, and he took the shard away from me. I tried to fight him. But he was too strong. Too wily.” She gave me a haunted look. “Then he did a horrible spell and split me in two. He took the best part of me away.”
“Not the best part of you.” I squeezed her hand to my chest. “You’re more than your magic, Gabrielle. You’re my sister.”
Gabrielle’s dark eyes welled with fresh tears. “It was worse than anything my father ever did to me. Worse than what those guys in Winslow wanted to do.”