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“Give her to me!” In one swift movement, he slides her out the window. She falls to the ground, but I break her fall, the two of us in a pile of grass and rubble beside Shamrock’s corpse.

I feel her pulse.

She’s still alive.

I slump over, shielding her with my own body.

Something crashes above me, inside the wall, with a sound like the whole structure collapsing. I look up at the window. The frame is empty. The gun is gone.

He's gone. I wait for him to reappear, but he doesn't.

Chapter Twenty-Six

TORIN

There's heat at my back and side. The skin on my face feels like it's peeling off. My temple throbs.

“Torin?”

I blink, disoriented, and choke on a lungful of smoke.

Valentina’s kneeling in front of me. Soot's streaked across her face, and she's bleeding at the temple.

“Oh, thank god you're alive,” she says. “Bronwyn's outside with your uncle. She's alright. Now we have to get you out.”

It all comes rushing back to me. Bronwyn, sliding out the window toward Valentina's waiting arms. Something fell, hit me, knocked me out. “Did you come back in here after me?” I want to shake her. “Valentina!”

“After all this, you think I'm going to let you die in a stupid fire?” she snaps. “Of course I did. But now we have to get out of here. How do we get back out? After I got back in, a beam fell and blocked the window. I don't think there's any way out, Torin.”

“Get down as low to the ground as you can,” I tell her, pulling her down with me. Less risk of smoke inhalation that way.

They never tell you how loud it is to be in the center of a fire: the roar of the flames, the crack of wood, the sirens outside.

There has to be a way out.

“We're not going to die in here,” I tell her. “You shouldn't have come back after me.”

“Now is the time to lecture me? Are you serious right now?” She blinks. “I wasn't going to leave you in here. Not after all this. Not after everything we've been through.”

I reach for her hand and give it a squeeze. Good girl. “We'll find a way out.”

I sit up. My head is throbbing. “I think I can lift that beam.”

“Don't,” she says, her hand on my arm. “It's too risky.”

“Riskier than sitting in a burning house?”

“I just don't want you to get hurt again,” she says, her voice shaking. “And I don't want you to die.”

“So what if I get hurt again? What's one more scar?” She’s not amused.

I crouch down at the base of the beam. What was all that training in Mountjoy for if I can't move a fucking beam? I get my hands around it. The other end is engulfed in flames, and as soon as I start to lift it, part of it crumbles.

“Careful, Torin!”

I try again to grasp it, but my shoulder is injured. I grit my teeth against the pain.

“Let me help,” she says. She grabs the end beside me. I move to the right. She moves to the left, and the two of us rise as one, injured but determined. “Throw it to the left,” I growl. “On three. One, two, three.”