But it was fine. More than fine. How many times in the past had she refused to swallow?
“It’s fine.” I forced a shaky smile. “See? I’ll do it for you.” Sucking on bitter, ashy blood, I held the mouthful on my tongue. Bending over her, I hinged her jaw open with my hand and released the sooty liquid into her.
Her skin accelerated its decay.
Her other arm exploded into snowflakes.
“Stop it! Wake up!” Cupping her cheeks, I smeared more blood on her perfect frosty skin. If I painted her in my lifeforce, perhaps she’d heal like she had when I’d poured blood into her punctured lung by the river.
I shook with horror and hope as I ran my seeping wrist over her forehead and chin. But...her skin continued transforming into twinkling dust, erasing her from my reach.
“Damn you, Rook! Don’t do this.” Snatching her close, I smashed my lips to hers, kissing her ruthlessly hard. “You can’t. I won’t let you.” Forcing breath into her lungs, I half kissed, half begged her.
And she didn’t respond at all.
It was like kissing a ghost.
A broken sound tore out of me as I kissed her again and again. “What did you tell me, huh? You said if I died tonight, you’d die with me, right? Well...same. If you dare die on me, I’m coming after you. I’ll tear apart whatever afterlife exists until I find you. But I’d rather have you here. With me.Alive. Sofight.Fight,damn it!”
Her back arched as the death throes found her. Just like on theriverbank when she’d reached the end, I fought for a way to stop it. But unlike the time where we triggered an ascension and somehow healed each other, this time...I had no power to call upon and no miracles to use.
I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t watch her die.
I couldn’t sit here and be so fuckinghelpless.
Placing what was left of her onto the snowy earth, I crushed her beneath me and gave her all my weight. I begged the fire in me to kindle. I snarled at it to burst into the warmest hearth—to heat her and balance her and bring her back to me...
But it completely forsook me as her eyelashes disappeared and her entire body became frost instead of flesh. “You die on me and I’ll never forgive you, do you hear me?”
Pressing my lips to hers, I murmured, “I will literally commit every atrocity imaginable if it means I get to keep you so...you better wake up and stop me.”
If the fire refused to give me power, then...I would take it. I would snatch it from others by using something worse. Something unforgivable. I didn’t care that it might kill me in the process. I didn’t care that it would definitely earn me a place in hell.
I sank into myself. I went deeper than the fire, past all the anger and grief, and hauled on a completely different type of power. A power I’d felt when I’d been on the cusp of death—a power that ensured I could become the most monstrous thing in existence.
My ears rang with a million heartbeats. I heard the trees screaming as they burned. I felt animals dying as they succumbed to their injuries and...I snatched up all their souls and hoarded them.
I used the battleground where so many were slain, claiming each and every one. I shuddered as I grew stronger with every life I claimed, feeding off the trees and flowers, birds and critters. Each soul filled up the wrongness inside me, making me thrum with mind-warpingpower.
Brushing white strands off Rook’s mostly vanished cheekbone, I pressed my forehead to hers, slammed my hand over her frost-flecked heart, and arrowed everything into her.
She arched violently.
Pain blasted through me as if I’d disrupted the very fabric of the universe. Something ripped open in my chest—
The storm froze mid-flurry as the bond between us turned into a pathway made of sunlight and starlight, welding our spirits back into one.
My entire soul reacted, lurching with savage desperation.
I kept feeding Rook as much energy as I could. I claimed the faintest heartbeats of insects. The quietest flutter of reptiles. I used everything.
The faintest scent of ice-crushed petals and frozen honey filled my nose.
I recognised that scent.
That wondrous flavour ofher.
