Free Spring Rain by Lizzy Ford

his mind, and he couldn’t let
himself think on what Decker had done without snapping. Instead, he
tentatively touched Morgan’s arm.
    She was cold, and the drain strong, but
nowhere near what it had been moments before. Decker’s fire and
shadows coalesced around his hand to protect him. Beck closed his
eyes to concentrate and loosened his magick into Morgan, letting it
find its way to the damage done to her body by the soul stone. It
took some effort, given the soul stone was fighting him, but with
Decker’s fire to support him, he began to heal the internal tears
to her soul.
    The soul stone also left a physical track of
damage down her throat and into her stomach and intestines. His
magick, and Decker’s, pooled around the stone making its way
through her digestive track.
    What the hell she was thinking, he didn’t
fully understand. She was a fire witchling. If the apartment
building had been burning down around her, she could easily deal
with that and survive. The fact the first responders thought she
drowned, however, and the presence of the stone in her gullet …
    Something else had happened during the fire,
and he suspected it had to do with the Dark witchlings pursuing
Morgan.
    “She needs to be awake before she can handle
the stone on her own,” Decker said quietly. “Can you clean up the
drugs in her system?”
    “I’ve never done that before,” Beck
replied.
    “I have.” Summer rested her hand on his,
adding her earth magick to guide him.
    Beck didn’t ask. He knew how much trouble
Decker had once gotten into – drugs, women, violence – and
suspected Summer had helped clean him up without understanding how
exactly that happened. She nudged and tugged his magick in the
right direction, to filter Morgan’s blood free of the sleeping
agent.
    “All right. Step back, you two. I’ll wake
her up,” Decker instructed.
    With some reluctance, Beck obeyed. The scene
was surreal. It hadn’t yet hit him that his Morgan was alive.
Instead, he stood quietly beside Summer and watched Decker’s magick
complete their combined work with the same detachment he watched
television. Morgan’s features were a normal shade again, and she no
longer reeked with the coldness of the soul stone.
    Of everything he wanted to say, Beck wasn’t
able to pick the first sentence he hoped to utter to the girl who
was his counterbalance and who had nearly killed him and then
subsequently saved his life before disappearing. None of this made
sense. It was rare when he felt anger, but today, fury fed by
confusion was starting to bubble within his breast.
    Everything I touch turns
to ash , she had once told him. He had
never felt that way around her before, but he did standing
helplessly beside her. She’d turned him to ash when she disappeared
and he didn’t quite know what he was now or if there was ever a
chance of there being something left to salvage after all that had
happened.
    His eyes settled on Decker, who met his gaze
without hesitation. Beck read the steely resolution on his twin’s
face and knew Decker had no regrets, even knowing how much pain
Beck had been in.
    “I did what I had to,” Decker replied to the
unspoken question.
    “That doesn’t make it right,” Beck said
icily.
    “I’d do it again, Beck, and if her continued
disappearance means you stay alive, I won’t stop because you care
about her.”
    “My life is not yours to toy with.”
    “One word: Autumn.”
    “You know why that had to be,” Beck snapped.
“You don’t get to take Morgan away from me!”
    “Omigod. Way too much … testosterone in
here,” Morgan complained faintly as she pushed herself up. “And for
the record, I’m eighteen and I choose where my life takes me.
Decker just paid the bills and was a pain in the ass about
everything.”
    “Good girl,” Summer agreed.
    Beck met the gaze of the girl meant to be
his counterbalance, unable to identify if he was elated to see her
or terrified or too shocked and angry to believe