My bloody hand falls heavily at my side.
His lashes sweep up, and he looks at me, silver gaze fading, his lips shaping silent words I try and fail to read.
More fissures crackle through that shell, releasing spores of emotion that clog my throat.
I can’t breathe. Can’t think or blink. Can’t peel myself from the sense that I just plunged the talon throughbothour chests.
We fall to our knees as one, and a line of blood dribbles from the corner of his mouth as his hand cups my face in a silent goodbye that burns.
He smears a tear across my cheek with his thumb. “Don’t … c-cry,” he rasps, and his chest jerks with the inability to draw breath. There’s a sadness in his eyes that screams a thousand words of sorrow he can no longer draw the air to speak.
Words chant through my memory, attacking me with their softness …
It’s said that your heart must be full to pass through Kvath—the God of Death—on your journey through to Mala.
A sob bursts free.
The thought of him drifting into that endless nothing that haunts my nightmares flays my chest with a slice of panic, tilling a truth I pass him on a hand still slick with the blood I drew. “I told you you’re the worst thing that ever happened to me,” I choke out, and his face buckles like I just twisted the talon, the blunt end of a grunt punching through. “I lied—”
He tips forward, pressing his lips against my forehead—a kiss that burns in a way that makes me gasp.
Warm. Not cold.
Warm …
My cheek, too, is cradled by a warm grip, and I cup my hand against his, sealing it there, heart shattering into a thousand bloody pieces.
I broke him …
I did this …
I can’t take it back …
“And I don’t hate you at all,” I sob, eyes squeezed shut. “I just love you so much it hurts. Both of us.”
His hand grows heavy, and I struggle to keep it pressed against my cheek.
Nuzzle into it.
Don’t leave me.
“You’re the happily ever after I don’t deserve.” I whisper, then feel his body waver.
His kiss falls away.
I open my eyes in time to see the light bleed from his, and gravity eases him backward. He tumbles off the edge of the cliff, and I snatch at the air, an agonized scream ripping up my swollen throat.
Arms reaching, he plunges through the pillow of mist that does nothing to soften his fall …
Gone.
Darkness presses in on me like ink, the chill of the winter night blowing out in puffs of white from between my chattering teeth, nipping at my candle flame and making it flicker. Making the three lanky shadows watching me from just beyond that line between dark and light look so much bigger.
One of them reaches out a hand—a stretch of bony fingers that click against each other as it paws at the edge, making the same scary rattling sound that came before the flames flickered out in the other cells.
One by one the candles died, cries snatched in suckled slurps that broke my heart into a million pieces.
I release a brittle sob as a wave of fear consumes me ...
