“Loren—” He tried to swallow, but it felt like someone was stepping on his throat. “She’s on the tower.”
Understanding flashed in her gaze. It was possible that Ivyana might’ve realized what he was going to do before he even realized it himself.
She gave one faint nod. “It’s okay,” she whispered, words wobbling. “It’s okay.”
Jack’s eyes shone with agony as he stepped forward, shifting Arthur’s weight from Darien’s shoulders to his own.
Ivyana closed the distance that stood between them and cupped Darien’s cheek with a gloved hand. “I love you, Darien.” Her voice was quavering. “Through everything we’ve been through, I’ve never stopped loving you. I couldn’t have asked for a better person to call my brother.”
He gathered his sister to his chest, squeezing her to him with arms that trembled as hard as the breaths he drew. “I’m sorry,” he whispered into her ear. There was so much more he wanted to say, but he didn’t have the time. They’d run out of something they’d stupidly believed they would have forever.
Immortality was nothing but an illusion—a false promise that had kept him from living out his days as if theymeantsomething. It wasn’t the guarantee of the years ahead that mattered.
It was what a person did today that truly counted.
If only he’d known this through all those years in which he’d buried his feelings, running from them like a coward; avoiding the anniversary of his mother’s death, unable to endure emotional pain the same way he could physical.
He’d thought he was strong. He’d believed he was so much stronger than this.
When Ivyana pulled away from him, her face was wet with tears. Darien held his free arm out to the others. They stepped close, arms thrown around each other’s shoulders, heads down and eyes closed as they embraced.
One last time.
These people—they were his family. Realer than blood. Growing up he’d always hoped for a better father; for someone more than just his sister to call his own.
Too bad it had taken twenty-four years and the end of his world to figure it out. To realize that what he’d needed had been right in front of him the whole time.
When they broke away from each other, Darien’s own face was wet. “We’ll see each other again,” he said. “I believe it.” Hehadto believe it.
He broke away from them, his hands trailing off their shoulders, leaving nothing behind of his family but a phantom touch.
And then he sprinted down the tunnel without another word, leaping over bodies and rubble as he ran.
He knew that when the Well exploded, there would be no surviving the blast. It would incinerate everything in a five-thousand-mile radius, turning everything they’d ever known into a wasteland. It would be as though the city had never existed.
But there was a chance Loren might live. If Darien could make it to her on time, she would survive.
He wouldn’t be able to live out her years with her the way he’d wanted to; wouldn’t be able to love her the way he’d planned.
But he would get to kiss her one last time. The thought was enough to make him run faster, the ground eaten up beneath the soles of his boots; enough to erase every trace of the regret coursing through his veins at the realization that this would be the last time he would get to see her face.
He focused only on that last kiss—on holding her for his final minutes.
She would survive.Shewould live.
And Darien found that it was enough.
—
The steps inside the cristala tower were unending. They wound up and up, the staircase snaking around and around until she was dizzy.
She had to make it. Shehadto. Because even if Darien and the others managed to dismantle the Well, these demons would destroy everything—could be in the tunnels with Darien at this very second, delaying Arthur from removing the reactor chamber.
She had to do her part.
Had to try.
When she reached the last of the steps, she hurtled through the door at the top, to the narrow ledge of cristala jutting out over the city.
