Her mouth hardens, wounded and proud, like I just stabbed something sacred inside her. “I’m not some delicate little girl?—”
“Yes, you fucking are!” My voice thunders through the kitchen. “You’re soft and good and stupidly fucking brave, and you think that’ll protect you, but it won’t.”
Her brows draw together. “I need to do this,” she whispers, but there’s fear in it now. Fear and doubt and… guilt.
“For who?” I demand. “To prove something to yourself? Or to escape?”
She flinches.
Bingo.
I press forward, not because I want to hurt her—but because I can’t lose her. Not when I’ve finally found the only goddamn light left in my life.
“You think it’s noble. You think it’ll make you feel whole. But I’m telling you, Cassandra—war doesn’t give you pieces. It fucking rips them from you.”
She slides off the table like her knees barely hold her but she stands.
“You can’t stop me,” she says quietly.
“I know.”
And that’s what kills me.
I can’t stop her.
I can’t follow her.
And I can’t protect her.
And when she leaves—there’s a chance I’ll never see her again because the world eats girls like her alive and I don’t think she’ll survive it.
Not with wings.
Not with me waiting.
Not whole.
She doesn’t say anything.
She just stands there.
Looking at me like I’m something worth saving and that’s what fucking breaks me.
“Do you know what it smells like?” I say suddenly, quietly, like the words are leaking out of the cracks in me. “When a human body burns?”
Her eyes widen—but she doesn’t look away.
“Do you know what a spinal cord sounds like when it snaps under your knee? When you have no choice but to kill or be killed?” My voice sharpens. “I do.”
I take a step closer. Not to intimidate her—no. To stop myself from falling apart.
“I’ve had my hand inside a man’s chest trying to pump his heart back to life while his eyes were already fucking gone.I’ve held a kid younger than my baby sister while he bled out screaming for his mum.”
My voice fractures.
I don’t look at her. I can’t.
“And now you wanna go play hero?” I drag my hand down my face. “You think you’re gonna be different? That war’s gonna spare you because you’ve got a pretty fucking smile and you mean well?”
