Page 122 of Vows of Ruin

“Hugo,” I whisper, voice trembling now, “What is it?”

He stands abruptly, nudges my thigh with his head, bounding down the hallway without waiting to see if I follow. I do. My heart is in my throat. “Hugo? Where are you—”

He stops at the war room door, nudges it with his nose, and it swings open an inch. Then he sits. Waiting. My pulse pounds in my ears. I push the door open fully. The world tilts. The table is empty except for three things. A folded note, an opened laptop, paused at zero seconds, and a small metallic tracker stained with dried blood.

“No…” the word cracks out of me, thin and breaking. Hugo nudges my leg again, whimpering this time, low, aching, pleading. I take one shaking step toward the table. Then another.

“MAX!” The scream rips out of me before I can think, tearing something raw in my throat.

“MAX!”

Footsteps thunder overhead. Doors slam. Voices collide down the hall, confused, tense, half-awake but ready to kill whatever scared me enough to scream like that. The first person to round the corner is Max, wearing the joggers he slept in, gun in hand.

“What—Wrenley?” His voice stops dead. One by one, they flood in behind him. Torque with a blade. Wrecker with a shotgun. Riot is already cracking his knuckles. Elias and Margot enter wide-eyed and breathless. Doc and Daisy stand in the doorway. They all freeze. Because I’m not screaming anymore. I’m just standing there. One hand braced on the table. Staring down at the pieces he left behind.

The note, the tracker, the laptop's glowing screen. Max’s eyes flick to my face. Something in him shatters. He rushes forward, tossing his gun on the chair next to me, reaching for me like he’s afraid I might fall apart before he gets there.

“What—Sparrow, what happened?”

My lips part. The words barely make it out. “He left.”

The whole room goes still. Max’s head jerks, confused, turning to fear. “What do you mean he left?”

I lift the folded note with a trembling finger, Liam’s handwriting. Max’s name. The paper feels like a weight I can’t hold, like it’s burning through my skin.

Torque steps closer, sees the blood-stained tracker beside it, and swears violently.

“He fucking cut it out.” His voice breaks into a snarl. “He doesn’t want us following him.”

Riot swears, pacing. Wrecker grips the back of a chair hard enough to splinter it. Margot covers her mouth. Elias picks up the tracker with shaking hands, studying it with wide, horrified eyes.

Max takes the note from me gently and reads it. His throat bobs hard. His eyes flick up, first to me, then to the others. I swear the world changes in the silence between his inhale and his exhale. When he finally speaks, his voice is hoarse.

“Sparrow…”

He hands me the note like it’s something sacred and devastating all at once. Then he steps back and looks at the laptop’s glowing screen. A muscle jumps in his jaw. “Play the video.”

For a moment, no one breathes. Hugo lets out a soft, broken whine behind me. My fingers hover over the keyboard. I can barely feel my heartbeat. “Wrenley,” Max whispers, standing close enough to catch me when I break, “Hit play.”

The moment I hit play, the war room falls into a suffocating silence. The laptop screen flickers, then sharpens. Liam appears. Not the version of him from under the oak tree yesterday, or that I fell asleep beside last night. Not warm. Not peaceful. This Liam is tired. Hollow-eyed. Shadowed.

Behind him, the soft, aching melody of our song fills the room in a whisper. No one moves. No one breathes. Max’s hand finds my lower back. Torque’s jaw ticks. Margot presses her fingers to her mouth. Wrecker steps closer to Daisy without even thinking. Riot’s fists clench at his sides. Elias bows his head, bracing for impact.

Then Liam starts speaking. It’s like the world shifts beneath our feet. His voice pours through the speakers, soft and raw. A confession unraveling. A man who already knows he’s breaking our hearts.

He tells me he loves me. More than he ever should have. More than he thought he ever could. He tells me I was his miracle. That I gave him something he didn’t know he could feel. That I saved parts of him no one else could reach. He talks about redemption and promises. How sometimes loving someone means breaking your vow to protect them.

He talks about always, about walking into hell alone. He talks about brothers, about family, about all of us. He’s a man leaving a piece of himself behind.

Everything inside me twists, sharp and violent, like my ribs are closing around my heart. The room listens without interrupting. Without flinching or hiding. Torque's eyes are glassy. Margot’s shoulders shake. Riot mutters. “No, no, no” under his breath, as if he says it enough, the universe will undo this. Wrecker wipes at his face with the back of his hand. Elias grips the edge of the table so hard his knuckles bleach white.

Max’s arm slides around my waist, holding me in place because he must feel the tremor rolling through me. The music swells behind Liam’s voice, low and haunting. And the last words come,

“I will love you for the rest of my life. And after. And after that. And every version of the world where I get to find you again. And I will find you again. In this life or the next.”

The screen goes black. The music stops. No one moves. No one speaks. The only sound is my breathing, sharp, high, and uneven. Like something inside me is cracking open. The air is suddenly too thin. Too tight. Too wrong. My vision blurs.

“Sparrow?” Max whispers, reaching to turn me to face him.