“You’re hurt.”
“I’ll heal.”
“You’re not healing.” Her hand finds the wound across my back—the one that runs from shoulder to hip, the one that hasn’t stopped bleeding. “This isn’t closing.”
She’s right. I feel it—my body’s inability to keep up, the damage accumulating faster than it can repair. The creature learned how to hurt me. Learned how to inflict wounds that won’t close.
I’m dying.
“It doesn’t matter.” I meet her eyes. Let her see the truth I’ve been avoiding since the creature first emerged. “What matters is keeping you alive long enough to find a way past that thing.”
“That’s not?—”
“That’s exactly how this works.” I lower myself onto the ice beside her, conserving strength I don’t have for a fight I can’t win. “You survive. That’s the priority. The only priority.”
She stares at me. A shift behind her eyes—recognition, maybe. Understanding of what I’m telling her.
“You’re planning to die for me.”
“I’m planning to give you time to escape.”
“Same thing.”
“It’s not.” I look toward the blocked passage. The sounds of the creature’s efforts are getting louder. More desperate. “Dying for you implies sacrifice. Nobility. Heroism.” I shake my head. “This is simpler. I can’t watch you die. So I won’t. Whatever that costs.”
The quiet holds between us. The ice groans. The creature tears at our fragile barrier.
“That’s the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me.” Her voice carries exhaustion and an emotion I don’t let myself name. “And the stupidest.”
“I’m not?—”
“You are.” She shifts closer. Her head rests against my shoulder—the one that isn’t destroyed, the one that can still bear weight. “Romantic and stupid. The complete package.”
I don’t argue. Don’t have the energy.
The creature screams again. Closer. Working its way through our temporary shelter.
“When it gets through,” Soreia murmurs against my shoulder, “we fight it. Both of us. Until we can’t anymore.”
“Soreia—”
“That’s how this works.” Her hand finds mine. Cold fingers interlacing with cold fingers. “You don’t get to decide I survive while you die. We make it or we don’t. That’s the only acceptable option.”
I want to argue.
Instead, I hold her hand in the frozen dark and listen to the creature tear through our defenses.
And I accept, for the first time, that I might not be enough.
That this might be the fight I finally lose.
That she has become the thing I cannot lose. And I might anyway.
The creature’s arm breaks through the ice fall.
I rise to meet it.
TWENTY-ONE
