The simplest request she has ever made of him, and the only one he cannot survive giving. The word shatters something inside him. Because he understands, in that moment, with a clarity that feels like being carved open, that this is the only thing she has left to ask for. And perhaps, this is all he has left to give her… and it feels like both mercy and betrayal all at once.
He cannot make her live in the memory of her torment just so he doesn’t have to live inside his grief for losing her.
His grip falters. Not from weakness. From love. The kind of love that does not hold on, but lets go when holding on would be cruel. The kind of love that does not save—only stays.
He presses his forehead to hers, breath breaking against her skin.
“I’m here,” he whispers. “I’ve got you.”
Her body softens beneath his touch.
For the first time since he found her… she looks at peace. A peace she was never given while she was alive. And it is the most devastating thing he has ever seen.
Kael realizes, with a horror that will live inside him forever, that this is what she needs. Not rescue or survival. Not saving or healing.An end to the war inside her.
A war she never chose.
A war waged on her until there was nothing left but this. Until surrender was the only thing left that felt like control.
A war he cannot win for her, just as another begins to take root inside him.
His fingers move to her wrists, untying the fabric.
He removes them both, pulling them away from her skin, as the river of blood flows freely once more.
He stays.
“Just us,” he promises. “Until the end.”
He does not move.
“I love you, Nalya,” he whispers, pulling her to his chest like he knows this is the last time he’ll do it while she’s breathing.
And slowly—so slowly he almost convinces himself it isn’t happening—the tension leaves her body.
The fight.
The fear.
The girl who used to laugh too loudly and run too fast and believe too easily.
Gone.
Maldrak did not take her life. He took everything that made her want to live it. But the cruelest thing he gave her was a version of herself she could not escape.
He feels it before he sees it—the quiet.
The unbearable, irreversible quiet.
And Kael knows: this is a silence he will carry for the rest of his life.
CHAPTER THREE
Beware the calm that follows pain
Some storms learn how to wear a face
Kael has spenta decade burying his grief, his secrets. Shoving them into the hidden depths of his soul to protect the ones he loves. And now it is no different.
