He kissed her.
It was a ghost of a kiss. Gentle. A soft press of lips. A question she was terrified of.
She sighed, closed her eyes, and answered.
Risa felt his hands slide around her jaw, holding her in place. Itdidn’t matter that his hand was covered in blood, or that the world around them was moments from splintering into a thousand pieces. It was a kiss that made her believe she could never be so Bad as to not deserve this: a warmth in her chest, a weightlessness in her belly, a spark that could burn through her and leave her wanting more. It was a kiss that made her believe in magic.
Then he was gone.
“Good.” His lips were slick from the kiss, his eyes hooded and dark. “If I die, at least it is with the knowledge that I’m falling in love with a terrible kisser.”
She laughed in spite of herself. Belatedly she covered her mouth with a hand before whispering, without real venom, “In my defense, that was only my second kiss.”
He pulled back enough to tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear. “If we somehow survive this awful, inescapable nightmare, we can practice.”
“Wait.” Yes, the world was ending, and yes, kissing had ignited a different kind of fire within her, but she needed to know. “I thought you and Amina—”
Javi gasped in mock horror. “She’s twelve!”
“Sixteen.”
“Same thing. How could you think that?”
“You’ve been whispering to each other!”
“Discussing what your secret could be!”
“Oh.”
“Minutes from death and you choose to argue with me about whether or not I have feelings for a girl I consider my sister.” He tutted. “Unbelievable.”
“We can practice now,” Risa amended, because she knew there would be no surviving this awful, inescapable nightmare since there was no way to survive her curse.
So they kissed again, Brunie tucked between them, and behind their closed eyelids, the world burst into blinding light.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIXIn Which the Prince Reveals a Secret
Risa found the afterlife very similar to regular life.
Toosimilar.
For example, the wound across her neck still ached and smarted as the hem of her tunic rubbed against it. Her knees trembled as she tried to extend her legs beneath her. The sun shone with unrelenting fervor. And the ghost of Javi’s lips still pressed against hers, soft and plush—the memory of his tongue swiping across her teeth—made it easy to forget the pain in her arm and her back and her leg and—
Oh.
She was alive.
Once her eyes adjusted to the blazing light, she noticed that the airship had splintered around her. Small fires curled around edgesof fallen sheet metal. The carpet had burned away, leaving behind the tattered remains on which she and Javi were sprawled. All that was left of the cockpit was a broken leather seat and the black console twisted out of shape. The benches had melted into puddles of silver, the crystal chandelier had shattered, and the desert heat beat down against her skin, merciless in the face of her near-death encounter.
Javi lay beside her. Sand clung to his hair, his clothes, his eyelashes. There was a new gash across his forehead, but otherwise he remained utterly handsome.
“We survived,” she whispered, awed by the impossibility of it.
He cracked open an eye to take in their surroundings and reached for her again.
“Kiss me and I’ll believe it.”
She shoved him.
