Kael.
"No!"
That single word, charged with so much emotion broke whatever was left of my already fragile heart. My knees hit the floor the second it sounded from Caelum's lips and I found myself shaking uncontrollably with tears streaming down my face as the firefighter slowly crouched low to drop the body in his hands on the floor.
The body.
Goddess, I couldn't believe that that was the word I had just referred to her as now.
The body.
It sounded like an insult, like a curse. It sounded like something straight out of my worst nightmares.
"Is… is that… her?" Caelum cried from beside me, his voice dripping with pain and anger and a kind of despair that ran so deep, I could even feel it on the tip of my tongue.
