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“Nur!” Arsene stumbles out of the room.
The sentinel’s blank stare turns on him. With a cry of triumph, the angel scrabbles to his feet and rushes at Arsene. “My treasure!”
In response, Nur lunges. His footsteps make the ground tremble like water.
“Wait! Don’t kill him—” Arsene blurts.
He barely staggers out of the way as the two monstrous fighters slam into the wall, their collision shaking loose bigger chunks of concrete, which bounce down Nur’s enormous back. Nur’s face is wild as he rips into the sentinel. The angel yowls, trying to shake him off. The light from the discarded torch turns their shadows into crazed beasts. Arsene is the first to see the danger—at the far end of the hall, the ceiling shudders and collapses before his eyes, letting loose a thunderous crack.
It happens quickly after that.
The collapse roars toward them. Suddenly, Arsene is surrounded by his mate on all sides. Nur’s enormous Hellform shelters him. A series of noises like bombs going off punch through the air, and clouds of dust erupt across them. Arsene covers his mouth with his sleeve as concrete, metal, dust, and sand tumble down. “Nur!” he shouts. Then the air is so thick with it he can’t see at all. And the noise is so loud he can’t hear anything else.
The bond flares bright, so bright it scours him from the inside out. He cries out soundlessly. A thunderclap sounds above him, and Nur’s howl, and the world spins around him and is gone.
Arsene comesto with his ears ringing. He blinks the grit from his eyes. The air is hazy with dust, but it’s clear that they’re no longer underground. Huge chunks of concrete are strewn around him in a massive pit, and a haze of dust hangs in the air.
The bunker collapsed around them.
He gets to his feet.Nur.
The sun’s earliest light washes the crater. Rubble stretches on and on around him, and he scans it desperately. For a heart-stopping moment he can’t find Nur. Then his gaze lands on the pale form in the midst of the rubble.
He clambers over the debris with weak limbs. The figure is huge—Nur is still in his Hellform somehow. He’s sprawled facedown amid the wreckage. When Arsene draws closer, he sees the wings.
Wings. Huge, black, and outstretched at a very wrong angle. Arsene stumbles toward Nur’s downed form and drops numbly to his knees. Nur must have sheltered him from the collapse. With a trembling hand, he brushes the hair away from Nur’s cool face and presses two fingers to his pulse. At the same time, the bond stirs.
Alive. He’s alive.
But barely.
Shaking, Arsene fumbles for his bag and rips the lid off the box of sentinel serum he stole from the poor, doomed sentinel. He scoops out the empty vials until he reaches the few that arestill full. Hardly thinking, he yanks the first green-capped bottle free and slots it into the injection device Irvin gave him.
“Don’t do this to me,” he whispers, pressing it to the pale crook of Nur’s unresponsive arm.
Nur groans.
Arsene empties the first bottle and discards it. He grabs the next. This time Nur stirs and the bond flickers like a dying flame.
He repeats the process again, again, using too much of the serum. He doesn’t care. The bottles clatter like sinister insects onto the concrete slabs. Nur shrinks before him, his Hellform slowly wicking away—but his wings remain. Arsene crawls closer, lifting Nur into his arms. The inky wings are pure silk on his bare arms, and his heart stutters. Feathers brush his cheek as they stir and settle. Nur’s breathing evens. The candle-flicker turns steady.
“Wake up,” Arsene murmurs to him. “You have to wake up.”
Nur’s hand twitches on his chest.
“You’re…alive.” His lips move, but barely.
“I’m alive?I’m alive?” Arsene’s voice rises incredulously. “I thought you were going to die!”
Nur winces. “I’m fine.” His eyes open, hazy and slitted against the light. He hisses. “Head hurts.”
Arsene bends double over him and an awful sound rips from his throat. He wants to curse everything in the universe and get on his knees to thank it. His shoulders shake and Nur winces at the jostling. The world blurs rapidly, the sun turns everything to indistinct gold, to pure, brilliant warmth. The smudge of light and dark that is his mate reaches up and brushes Arsene’s cheek with his knuckle gently.
“You’re alright,” Nur whispers. “It’ll be alright.”
Arsene takesthe remainder of the secret store of sentinel serum and wraps it in his pack. He leaves it in the guts of the old tower, next to the square where the caravan camped.
He takes the broken pieces of his sword and puts them on top of the bundle, then piles chunks of concrete from the collapsed bunker over both. When he’s done it resembles a cairn. He steps back and rubs the sweat from his eyes.
