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I thought about that some more. “No. You taste like snow?”
-
It was nearly dark now, which meant I’d suffered another lapse in time. I could feel the warmth of Mat’s body where he lay against my right side, but everything ached and I didn’t even have the strength to turn my head.
“Mi copo de nieve?” I whispered.
Mathias stirred, appearing above me a moment later. “That isnota new nickname,” he admonished with mock sternness, peering down at me with sleepy yet undeniably worried eyes. “I am not your fuckingsnowflake.”
I coughed, but that hurt too. “Are those really…the last words…you want to have said to me?”
“Ren. You’re not dying.”
“I’d say I hate to argue…but seeing…as that’s our entire dynamic…yes, I am.”
“You’renot,” he insisted stubbornly, his jaw determinedly jutting out as if looking fierce and growly was sufficient to stave off death. “I won’t let you.”
Oh fuck, if only that was enough. I’d hold him so tightly it hurt, dig my teeth and nails into his fucking soul and never let go if it meant neither of us could be torn away from the other.
“It’s time…to stop with the pretty lies now,” I murmured, staring at his face and trying to memorise every enchanting line of it. “We both know I don’t have long.”
His expression washed clean of all deception and attempt at comfort, turning stricken. “No. No, Ren, we haven’t had longenough.” He wrapped his arms around me, sinking his face into my neck as he sobbed out each word. “You’re not going anywhere, you hear me?”
I could feel myself drifting again and gritted my teeth as I tried to fight against it. For whether it was another bout of delirium or the actual end, either meant I would losethis, these final precious moments with my lover, my heart, myeverything.
“Don’t you dare, you prick,” Mathias snarled, smacking at my chest.Fucking ow.“You’re staying here!”
“Please try not to…insult Dios like you do me when you eventually stand before…His gates,” I hissed, blinking back tears as another wave of pain cascaded through my body. “I’d hate to…have to forsake my comfortable life in heaven to come and…join you in being tortured in the…fires below.”
He scowled. “I’ve not given upon this life yet, Renato, and if you think there’sanythingI won’t do to keep you here, then the Blessed cold’s already gotten to you.”
I couldn’t feel the cold, although a quick blink at what I could see past his head told me that the snow had stopped falling. It now lay crisp and glittering, a scene of wonder and magic draped in moonlight.
I also couldn’t move my hands. That felt like a terrible shame, for if this was truly my death then it would have been nice to depart the mortal plane with one last sweep of my fingers across his jaw, trace the smooth dimples in his back, feel the weight of his warm and silky cock in my hand. The uptight bastard would probably frown upon getting intimate with someone inches away from becoming a corpse, but hey, he could whine about it all he liked when I was gone.
“Kiss me,” I breathed, and he did, teasing my lips with his before sinking his tongue inside to explore my mouth as if he knew as well as I did that we’d never get to do this again. He was crying as hard as he was kissing, hot tears running down from his cheeks onto mine, but I didn’t have the energy to call him on it.
I needed my breath to tell him the only thing that mattered.
“I love you,mi sol,” I whispered as the darkness swooped in and claimed me for its own. “Death…will not dare change that.”
*
Chapter Fifteen
Tears blurred my vision, mellowing the snow-laden landscape into a meld of pastel colours with no detail. It rendered our sack of provisions into a brown lump, my hands into frozen, instinct shapes, and allowed me the illusion that the man I was crouched over was absolutely fuckingfine.That his skin wasn’t blue, his shoulder wasn’t gushing pus and surrendering to necrosis, that his eyes weren’t sunken in that distant glaze that signalled the infection stealing his mind from me once more.
But my poor vision couldn’t imagine away the sound of his harsh, stilted breaths, or the pained whimpers Ren made with each rise of his chest. And no amount of Blessed daydreams could conjure up a healer in any of the Temarian towns I’d staggered into over the last week, begging and pleading and not caring if I was recognised by my people. Yet there had been none gifted with the Touch in these remote communities, none who could save my prince now he’d passed beyond the reach of mere medicine, and as my desperation grew, so did my anger.
FuckDios.Fuck every single damn god that ever existed or didn’t, because not one of them would help him. Ren had been suffering his entire life and no one fuckingcared.
Drying my face with my sleeve, I pushed myself to my feet. I’d been terrified to leave him out here, knowing the injury or the cold or even a pack of stray wolves might take him from me in my absence, but if the alternative to leaving him alone was watching him fuckingdie,the choice was no longer any such thing.
“I love you too,” I whispered and then I was running, my boots crunching down on the fresh layer of snow as I shoved my way blindly through the trees. North was the only destination I had in mind; I knew we were miles away from any cities but none of the settlements we’d passed so far had held any hope, so all that was left was what we hadn’t yet been able to reach as Ren’s condition had worsened.
My breath exhaled in shallow pants, a steady rhythm that matched the single word in my head.
Please, please, please, please, please.
