My gaze homes on Zane—no longer pressed against the wood but on his knees with his cloak clutched close to his chest. Cainon’s standing behind him, eyes wide, inky balls of blazing accusation. He’s fisting Zane’s hair, baring his too-tender throat to a golden blade.
That macabre creature stills, then scurries down into the chasm in my chest so fast it kicks up crystal shards in its haste.
All the fight melts from my bones.
“No-no-no,” I plead. Dropping the sword, I clamber off the guard and toss my hands up either side of my head in surrender, the blood coating them oozing down in rivulets.
Cainon looks down his nose at me, the rain dripping off his brutal features while Zane squirms in his hold.
I drop to my knees, shuffle forward, a flush of desperation softening my ravaged insides. “Cainon, please. Take my life instead.Please.”
Another crack of lightning, closer now, reflects in Cainon’s eyes like the silver fissures of a broken plate.
He pushes the blade deeper into Zane’s flesh.
I stop moving. Stop breathing.
Too scared to even blink.
Cainon takes in the scene around us, his only surviving guard now bound in a groaning heap, reaching for Rhordyn’s sword. Cainon looks behind me to where I don’t doubt the ship is plowing through the savage waves, hopefully past the rising chain. His upper lip peels back, features honing into something truly horrific.
There’s not a drop of mercy in his callous stare when it locks on me again.
Trembling, Zane wiggles his fingers into one of the many pockets tucked amongst the folds of his cloak. I see a flash of gold as he pulls out the Bahari token he stole off one of the sailors.
“I have a t-token,” he pleads, waving it high enough for Cainon to see, and my heart impales itself on the tip of a shattered rib.
He’s trying to buy his life …
Cainon’s gaze drops. He plucks the token from Zane’s grip, weighing it in his hand. Hope bursts in Zane’s eyes—infectious, fragile hope.
Cainon looks at me, and in those inky eyes, I see too much.
Too little.
I see the way this story unfolds—how hopeless it is for me to try to rewrite the ending already scored in stone. To change the fate of this boy who’s going to die simply because I love him. Because I’m a black hole that gobbles up everything bright and good and alive.
Because Iexist.
I break Cainon’s stare and look at Zane. Force a smile for him to cling to; a pretty lie to soften the sharp truth notched against his throat.
It’s okay,I mouth, even though it’s not. I mouth it over and over again as his eyes fill with tears.
It’s okay. It’s okay—
“You did this,” Cainon says, his voice a chilling monotone full of heinous promises.
I crumple inside because I know he’s right.
It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay—
The blade lowers …
Zane’s eyes widen, and he slumps forward as I look up at Cainon, a seedling of hope blossoming in my heart.
Is he … reconsidering?
The gold token lands with athunkin a puddle of red by my knee.
