Jack kept his eyes forward, concentrating on Felix, whose body was shuddering with something like repressed sobs. ‘Take it easy,’ he muttered, but for a million pounds he couldn’t have told anyone which one of them he was saying it to, or was it to himself? Her face. Her pain. Oh God, her pain. He could see it, feel it and his arms ached with something like the desire to touch her. Was it only minutes ago that he’d kissed her? He felt so much older now, millennia settling in his bones, the weight of experience dragging at his feet as the new implications pulled at the edges of Skye’s mouth and made her expression stretch. ‘I killed them,’ he heard her whisper above the scratch and scrape of sand. ‘I killed them. It was me.’ She stumbled and it was all he could do not to drop Felix there on the dirt and catch her, wrap his arms around those frail shoulders and pull her close. Whisper into her hair that the agony would pass.
