Page 124 of Ashen Wings

Finnick takes a shallow, strained breath, and already the dimness in his eyes grows. He stays locked on me, gurgling and sputtering. Blood dribbles to his chin.

“Never forget,” he whispers. Then his hand falls away and his body keels into me.

My chest strums while my limbs feel lighter than air. The essence of our tracking link fades.

Once upon a lifetime, I eagerly awaited this day. The one where freedom was a sweet taste on my tongue. I’d promised myself it’d be met with a fuck you to the mercenary who held an unpayable debt over my head, but now as his skin grows cold, I can’t find the words.

Two simple words, a lifetime of closure.

I bite the inside of my cheek and draw blood. Tears gather behind my eyes. This was supposed to be a moment of glory, but in the end, all I feel is pain. Not pain for Finnick, but for the version of myself I’m losing—the only one familiar. The only one comfortable.

Without Finnick, who am I? I’m terrified to learn the answer.

“May Morvayne have mercy on your soul,” I whisper, still unsure if I mean it. I lower him to the ground and tuck his matted cloak over his face.

Of the many truths I’ve come to learn about this world, only one plucks the strings in my chest.

The only true freedom you get is death.

50

After hours of cautious travel, we ascend to the surface. The air changes first carrying the faintest bite of frost like a warning brushed on my lips.

I gave myself the remainder of our trek to grieve for the old mercenary who damned my soul, with the promise that once the sunlit skies caressed my cheeks, I’d leave him behind. So, I shed silent tears, and when we climbed the steps and greeted the evening light, I whispered one last goodbye without a glance back.

Finnick is nothing but memory now. Like so many others in my life. My mother, my father, Yaris, Finnick. Each is a notch in my bones, a permanent reminder that life in this fucked up world, is fleeting.

My only twisted hope for the old man is that he found his way back to the wife he spoke of in glimpses. Even now, a piece of me hates that grief takes root for a man who broke me long before I ever learned to mourn him.

Nothing but a crisp, snow-packed silence hangs thick around us, like someone’s muffled our world in cotton. The vacant storehouse offers empty soot-covered space and discarded mining relics. Axes and picks lean haphazardly against the perimeter walls, gathering rust and dust. Helmets and tool belts linger in a discarded pile by the door, like the miners were so eager to escape the demons underground they didn’t bother hanging their equipment up one last time.

“The border is just over the bend,” Saphine says, directing a hand toward a wooded trailhead. “The outpost won’t be guarded.”

“And how are you so sure?” Jace asks. I haven’t offered him so much as a glance over my shoulder. Even one look threatens the dam I’ve built around myself. There’s too much at stake right now to waste the breath.

Maybe when this is over, we’ll pour ourselves a glass of wine, settle into his study, and talk through my truths. Seated beside one another, sharing our secrets. My chest heaves at the thought, like it’s caging something volatile. Rage, heartbreak, confusion? Maybe a lethal concoction of all three.

“Shift change is at sunset. Besides, Finnick and those couriers very well could have slaughtered them for all we know,” she says plainly. “Only one way to be certain, though.”

The four of us draw our weapons and follow the winding path. Mangled vines claw at my legs, as the brush thickens. My boots sink into ankle high muck as the ground softens to marsh. Add rot-scented mud to the list of things now squirming between my toes.

I’m looking forward to a hot bath and the comfort of my bedchamber’s familiar sheets. Just a little further and we’ll be back on friendly ground. Somehow I don’t think the pulse in my throat will subside, though. It hammers like a drum, steady and insistent.

“Nova.” Jace’s tone is a quiet plea in the dying light. “Talk to me.”

I don’t respond. My shoulders tense, my neck cramps, and the start of a migraine seeds itself between my eyes. Every step ahead is heavier than the last.

“Please, starling.” His cool fingers brush against the palm at my side, but I rip it away.

“I can’t right now. Let’s just focus on the mission.” I choke on the bile caught in my throat. The words he once offered me are hot iron on my tongue.

Jace’s jaw muscle ticks, but he seals his lips shut. For the first time, in maybe his entire life, he’s followed a direct order. Tenebris would be proud.

The trees thin as we approach the ridge, their branches skeletal against a bruised, grey sky. Twilight drags into long shadows between trunks, stretching them like claws over the frosty ground.

The border wall juts from the earth ahead, half-buried in frost and moss, forming a crooked impasse of granite slabs.

Just as Saphine suspected, not a guard is in sight. There’s nothing, in fact. Just a hollow stillness, carved out from the air, like the earth paused mid-breath and forgot how to exhale.