Her voice, jagged.
Her voice in every corner of the room.
I try to move, to find her, but the straps bite. Leather. Steel. My wrists burn, my chest heaves, but I can’t reach her.
Not here.
Not in this hell.
Her face swims in the smoke. The chapel walls rise again—broken glass, stained light, her body shaking in my arms, her tears wet on my tongue.
“You’ll leave again.”
Her whisper slices.
“I won’t—” My throat tears on it. “I won’t leave?—”
But then the blast comes again.
Always the blast.
Light—white, blinding.
Sound—gone.
Force—splitting me open.
I convulse against the cot. My ribs grind like broken glass. My stomach twists, bile rising hot. A mask slams against my face, oxygen flooding, burning like fire instead of air.
Hands shove needles into veins that don’t want to hold. Tape rips. Gauze presses. My blood pumps too fast, too thin.
The chapel bleeds into the battlefield. Her face into the crater. Her voice into the gunfire. “Don’t let me fall alone.”
I scream against the mask, soundless. My body arches, trembles, crashes back down.
I see Mason.
Strapped to machines. Eyes half open, whispering truths I wouldn’t admit.
“Cass, he doesn’t know how to survive it, but he can’t breathe without you.”
I see Torres. Hauling me, snarling in my ear, “On your fucking feet, Kingston!”
And then dropping me at her feet.
And I see her.
Always her.
Butterfly.
I try to tell her. Try to confess, raw and bleeding, but all that leaves my mouth is the word that owns me.
“Butterfly.”
Again.
Again.
