All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 247

247

Patch could not breathe.

For a long time he gripped her tightly, and she held onto him like he was the life preserver she had been without. He pressed his lips to the parting of her hair and breathed her.

He ran his hands over her arms and up her back to the nape of her neck.

He traced her face lightly and knew for certain, for it was a face he had painted a hundred times and dreamed of a thousand more.

The relief did not come. His bones ached for her, his heart and his head, and he gripped the cloth of her dress tightly in his fingers, his hands shaking, his body shaking.

And as lightning flashed and made its way through gaps at the height of the gable, she illuminated.

The delicate purse of her lips, the full green of her eyes. He looked at her skin and legs and feet and hands. Her hair was richly red, her dress pinched at a narrow waist. A mirror of Grace Number One, so close it was

like she could not have been real.

“I found you,” he said.

“I waited for you,” she said.

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