Fearful tears glistened in her eyes. “Please don’t let me die, David.”
That tone. Those words. Things were breaking apart inside him, cracking into splinters so tiny, he didn’t think they’d ever reconnect correctly.
David prided himself on control. He could control so much, but he couldn’t control this.
He tried anyway. “You will not die. You aren’t scared. It doesn’t hurt. Do you understand me? You are not allowed to die.”
The coercion flooded her, and while it didn’t control life and death, it alleviated Anna’s fears until shades of irritation darkened her emotions instead. “And suddenly you’re acting like you care?”
He deserved that, but it still stung. He grazed his thumb down her cheek. “Everything I do, I do because I care.”
Her eyes closed once more. “People don’t break the things they care about.”
David eyed her injuries, still bloodless. His entire life distilled down to those punctures in her body. If she didn’t make it…
“Open your eyes.”
She obeyed and winced. “Why?”
“You need to stay awake.”
“It hurts to look at you. I don’t want you to be the last thing I ever see.”
“Then don’t look at me. Just keep your eyes open.”
She stared at the ceiling, and a tear slipped from the corner of her eye that he caught with his thumb. He studied the delicate lines of her face.
“I’m dying, aren’t I?” she whispered.
“No.” He saturated his voice with sweetened magic until it was dripping. “You will not die today. Do you understand?”
Blue eyes turned to stare deep into his. At her throat, a weak pulse fluttered, vulnerable and exposed. Where was Sean? What was taking so long?
“I wish I’d never met you,” Anna said, and despite her weakness, that love he’d sensed the last night they’d been together spun to the surface of her emotions, dazzling. Impossibly, it had grown stronger, like breaking her heart had only bled her love for him over everything else. “And now I’m going to die, broken and alone.”
“You aren’t dying,” he whispered because his voice wanted to shake the same way his hands were. “And you aren’t broken or alone.”
She sucked in a pained breath. “Yes, I am. The heartbreak is unbearable.”
“I’m sorry.” David wished there was a stronger word, a better way to express how much he wanted things to be different. He wanted to love her, but he could never do it wholly. How fucked up was that?
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, you’resorry. Do you even mean that, or is it just something to say?”
He might have defended himself if he had any words that would matter. But he had none.
None at all.
He deserved this spite.
“I wish I could take it from you,” he finally said.
Her pallid skin went bloodless. “Maybe you can,” she said, though it slurred together in a smear of words.
He looked down at her wounds, now weeping blood once more. “Anna?”
Two more blinks, and her eyes closed.
“Wake up,” he said. She didn’t, so he said it louder, squeezing her lifeless hand, pouring energy into his magic. “Anna, wake up!”
