Nothing happens.
So, I pry her lips open, panic rising as I press harder, spilling more of myself into her. But the cut’s already starting to heal, so I take the dagger and carve into myself again, this time even deeper, letting more blood flow out.
“Please, Sapphire. I need you to live,” I repeat what I’ve been demanding of her since I realized she was dying.
Still, nothing. Just the steady flow of my blood, unable to help the one person I would give anything to keep safe.
“Take everything,” I tell her, my desperation bleeding into the words as much as my life bleeds into her mouth. “All of it. My blood, my magic, my life. Whatever you need. I don’t care, as long as you live.”
Desperation claws through my chest, a sob rising, choking me. Because the one thing I have left—my blood, my life—isn’t enough.
And then—a flicker. The faintest, smallest movement as she swallows.
“Yes,” I murmur in her ear, guiding her mouth more firmly against my wrist. “There you go.”
The pull of her lips is intoxicating. It’s fire and ice, pleasure and torment, colliding brutally in my veins. It’s an exquisite destruction—a ruin I crave more than sanity.
Her body arches against mine, hungry and insatiable. Her hands, once limp, now grip my forearm, her nails digging into me, marking me, claiming me even in her weakened state.
“Sapphire,” I groan, my voice barely audible, caught between agony and ecstasy, between warning her and begging her never to stop.
She doesn’t listen. She doesn’t care. Her focus is on consuming me—on devouring me whole.
This isn’t just drinking. It’s obliteration. It’s the annihilation I’ve yearned for, the destruction of everything I am. And gods help me, it feels incredible. Like being unmade by the most exquisite torture imaginable.
Her teeth—sharper now, more defined—sink deeper into my wrist, and the sensation sends a jolt of pleasure so intense it’s almost unbearable down my spine.
She’s taking too much,I realize.Far too much.
And I don’t care.
A weak, breathless laugh slips past my lips. Of course this is how it ends. It was always going to be her teeth in my skin, my life bleeding into her body, my love for her burning me alive.
Darkness creeps into my vision, the edges blurring, the world fading.
I should stop her.
But I don’t. I won’t. Because if I stop her and if it’s not enough—if the life flows out of her again and I’m left on this cosmic floor without her—it will all have been for nothing.
“You’re doing great,” I murmur, dizzy from blood loss, from pleasure, fromher.“It’s yours. All of it’s yours. It’s always been yours.”
My heartbeat slows, pain and pleasure fading into numbness. Darkness calls me, but I’m not afraid. Because it’s peaceful. Like falling asleep after the longest day.
With my last fading strength, I pull her closer, my lips brushing her ear as she continues drinking, desperate and deep, consuming my soul.
Maybe she can.
Maybe she already has.
And somehow, it feels right.
Because this is what love is, isn’t it? A sacrifice. A surrender. A willing, brutal, beautiful destruction.
This is what I was made for.
Not to rule. Not to be a prince. Not to fight in a war that never mattered.
I was made to burn for her. To bleed for her. To shatter completely, offering her every last, broken piece of me.
“If love is destruction,” I murmur, my lips grazing her temple, “then let it destroy me. At least this way, I’ll be part of you forever.”
And as the last threads of my life unravel—as the world tilts into blackness and I fall into her like she’s gravity—I find myself smiling.
Because she’ll live. She’ll save Zoey. She’ll be the incredible, beautiful, star touched warrior she was born to be.
And throughout it all, she’ll carry me with her, always.
