He mumbled something I didn’t catch, gathering me in a vicious hug. A second later, his arms loosened as he plummeted into exhausted sleep.
We’d slept in the dreamscape before. Sometimes we stayed in this realm and sometimes we snapped back into reality. I waited to see if he’d vanish and leave me alone, seeing as I hadn’t joined him in slumber, but he twitched against me and fell deeper.
I felt his thoughts pulling away from mine.
Felt the bond going quiet and dark and cold.
Lucien...I shook him.Answer me.
No reply.
He left me lying there with his body still inside me, clinging to his arm as he twitched.
“Please, wake up,” I begged. “Please, don’t do this...”
I tugged on the link between us, trying to reach him on the other end, but...it snapped.
No!
The connection between his heart and mine severed with soul-slicing agony and...tiny pieces of his arm started to flake.
“No...” Scrambling upright, I rolled him onto his back and shook him. “LUCIEN! Wake up.”
His head flopped to the side.
Golden embers coiled from his shoulders, his skin going sooty and soft. Tiny cracks of light appeared across his chest, his arms, his beautiful face.
“Lucien!Wake up!”
He groaned as he roused just enough for his dull, dark eyes to meet mine. He looked at me with such love, it ripped out my heart andhurt.
“I’m fine,” he slurred. “I’m just...tired, that’s all.”
But the bond never reconnected.
His heart never restarted.
His eyes closed and I slammed my lips to his, summoning a snowstorm to bury him—to stop the burn, bandage the cracks, and keep him with me.
But the ice never answered and the dreamscape shattered—
I shot upright in the real world.
Scrambling onto my knees, I turned to face Lucien beside me.I shook him hard. “Wake up. We need to find Frank. Open your eyes. Hurry—”
My voice cut off with a cry.
He lay unconscious, the tiniest dusting of ash coating his cheekbones.
No, no, no.
He couldn’t do this.
He can’t!
Flinging myself on him, I pummelled his heart. I punched and struck, beat and begged. “You can’t. You can’t!”
His body continued to break and scatter.
