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2
Bree
“Pax.” I fall to my knees. Father Bryne’s cross falls from my pocket and clatters on the ground beside the Ripper’s discarded blade. I think I see red mist curling from it, but I’m not paying attention. Not when Pax is…when he…
“Can you hear me, Pax?” I cup my warrior’s face, trying to lift him, wishing, hoping…
…but the moment my fingers touch his skin, I know that he’s gone.
No.
No.
Please, no.
It can’t be. I can’t imagine being without Pax. He had everything he ever wanted. He had life again. I could touch him and hold him and kiss him. He was real. He’s always been real to me.
How can he be gone?
Tears stream down my cheeks. They drop onto his tunic, mingling with the blood still seeping from his wound.
It’s not right. Pax’s blood should be inside him, not staining Grimdale’s graveyard dirt.
So much blood…
“Brianna.”
Edward looks up at me from where he has his hand pressed against Pax’s heart. His eyes swim with shame and regret. What Edward just did is perhaps the bravest and stupidest thing he’s ever done, and there’s so much I want to say to him but not now, not when Pax is…
I can see Edward’s dark eyes turning bleak with desolation. And I know then with a certainty that drives the air from my lungs that this isn’t just Edward’s morose poet side coming out to play. He is on the other side of the Veil, and he can feel Pax’s heart, canfeelthat it has stopped beating…
Please, please.I don’t know who I’m begging. If one of Pax’s ancient gods is even listening right now, maybe they’ll hear my prayer.I’d give anything to have him back again.
I look down at my warrior, my beautiful brave Pax. And I see Edward’s cord burning bright, winding from his chest all around us and back through the cemetery. But Pax’s cord is unspooling, the blue light fading to nothing as it winds out of his body at high speed, whipping through the air and snapping free of its owner.
I don’t know how I know what to do. I can’t explain it. Perhaps it’s because I finally have a name for what I am – a Lazarus – but I feel a surge of power as I reach down and grab the cord just as the very end unspools from Pax’s body. With my other hand, I pull apart his lips and stuff the end of the cord inside.
It doesn’t work. The cord wants to slip back out, like a piece of spaghetti sliding off a fork. I sob as I try to shut Pax’s lips, but his chin is all slack and weird-feeling and I can’t do it I can’t I can’t and he’s gone…
Desperate, not knowing what else to do, I lean down and place my lips on his.
Pax’s lips are warm, but they’re still, lifeless – nothing like kissing my warrior should feel. The cord hums between us. It jerks against my lips, trying to break us apart, but I’m not ready to let go.
Tears fall thick and fast, but I don’t break the kiss.Pax, I’m so sorry. You had everything you wanted…except the one thing I couldn’t give you, those three words that I’m too afraid to say because of exactly this…because if I love you and you leave me I will fall apart completely. But if you’d just come back to me, I will say them now, because they’re true. I love you, and I have loved you for longer than you know, and I’m a big, foolish scaredy-cat but I amyourscaredy-cat…
Pax’s lips open.
And before I can hope, and pray, and think, he is kissing me. My Pax is kissing me, his lips raw with a desire that tears me open and spills my unspoken words against his tongue. His lips burn bright and warm andaliveas he devours me, pushing my lips wider so his tongue can wrap around mine.
We dance with the silver cord that slides down his throat. All that matters to me now is that cord moving between our lips as it winds itself back inside Pax, and the fact that I will nevernotbe able to resist this man, not when he is alive and mine and kissing me with the fervour of his battle lust.
“Pax?” I try to speak, but the words are crushed away by the force of his kiss.
My eyes fly open, and they meet two sparkling blue orbs, pale as the sky on a perfect New Zealand summer’s day. A hand grasps the back of my neck, thick fingers tangling in my hair, pulling me closer.
Pax. You’re alive.Alive!
He kisses like he doesn’t want to breathe air unless I’m breathing it, too. He clings to me as if I’m the only thing tethering him to the world. And maybe I am. The cord slithers between us, making my teeth sing as it hurtles down his throat, winding tight inside him once more, where it should be.
