“Maybe.” He doesn’t sound convinced. “But if there isn’t?—”
“Kharvek.” I step closer. Close enough that I have to tilt my head back to meet his stare. “Listen to me. I didn’t save you from the Matron’s control just to watch you die in a ravine. I didn’t kiss you, and want you, and choose you, just to lose you before we’ve even figured out what this is.”
His breath catches. Something shifts in his gaze—surprise, maybe, or hope.
“I need you to survive this.” My voice cracks on the words, all that careful control finally fracturing. “Not for the rebellion. Not for the survivors. For me. Because I’m not done learning what this is, and I refuse to learn it alone.”
He stares at me. The sky lightens. Dawn approaches. Somewhere out there, hunters close the distance between us and death.
Then he leans down and kisses me.
Not gentle this time. Not questioning. This is a claiming—a vow sealed with lips and teeth and everything neither of us knows how to say. His uninjured arm wraps around my waist, pulls me against him, and I feel the thunder of his heart against my chest.
When he pulls back, his forehead drops to mine. We breathe each other in for a long moment.
“I’ll survive.” The words are rough. Certain. A vow. “Whatever it takes. I’ll survive.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
I don’t know if he can keep it. Don’t know if either of us can keep any of the promises we’re making in this gray dawn at the edge of the world.
But I choose to believe him anyway.
The first rays of sunlight crest the horizon. The hunters are coming.
And we’re out of time.
TWENTY-FOUR
KHARVEK
Irefuse to be helpless.
The hunters are coming. Dawn bleeds across the horizon, red and gold, and somewhere out there in the barren wastes, the Matron’s killers close the distance between us and death. I should be preparing. Should be positioning for combat, calculating angles of attack, doing something useful.
Instead, I’m crouched against the ravine wall, my arm screaming, my channels burning, my body betraying me in ways I’ve never allowed it to betray me before.
Imara approaches. I hear her footsteps on the loose stone, sense her presence before I see her face. She’s been settling the survivors deeper into the ravine, finding hiding spots for Dena and the others, doing everything she can to prepare for what’s coming.
“Let me help.” She crouches beside me. Her hands hover over my bandaged arm.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re dying.”
The bluntness catches me off guard. I look up, find her gaze fixed on mine—unflinching, seeing too much.
“The channels are failing.” Her voice carries that clinical precision she uses when delivering truths she knows will hurt. “The damage isn’t just physical. The pathways that carry your magic are collapsing in on themselves. If you try to fight like this?—”
“I know what happens if I fight like this.”
“Then let me fix it.”
“You can’t fix it. You said yourself—days to heal. We don’t have days.”
“I said days if we let it heal naturally.” She shifts closer. “There’s another way. Faster. More dangerous.”
