The ringing eases. The edges blur. The fire cools. The restraints don’t feel so heavy anymore. The monitor steadies.
One beep.
One breath.
Still here.
I sink back into the dark, not safe, not whole—but alive.
Alive.
And I swear I feel her hand on mine when the world finally stops burning.
The dark thins.
Not gone. Not safe. Just thinned out enough that I can breathe without choking on fire.
My chest still feels split. My ribs ache like they’ve been pried apart and stitched back wrong. My veins are heavy, dragging ice and fire in turns.
But there’s a sound.
Not the hiss of oxygen. Not the shrill of monitors.
A softer sound. Fragile. Familiar.
Butterfly.
I force my eyes open, lids cracked like they’ve been nailed shut. The light is brutal, stabbing. Shapes blur and swim. For a second it’s the desert again, smoke curling, shadows shifting, gunfire snapping too close.
Then the blur sharpens.
Her.
Cassandra.
Slumped in a chair, shoulders hunched forward, hair falling from her tie. Her hands are wrapped around mine, both of them, clutching like I might slip straight through her fingers if she lets go.
Her eyes are red. Puffy. The kind of swollen you only get from hours—days—of crying. But she’s still staring at me, wide and wild, like she doesn’t dare blink.
“Dax?”
Her voice. Christ. It cuts through everything—the drugs, the pain, the ghosts. It’s raw, jagged, beautiful.
I try to answer, but it’s just a rasp, a broken scrape of air past the tube in my throat. My chest heaves. Panic licks hot, but her hands squeeze tighter, grounding me.
“Shh.” She leans close, forehead nearly touching mine. “You’re here. You’re okay. You’re here.”
I blink slow. Force myself to hold her eyes. To believe her.
But the guilt is louder than the machines.
“You’ll leave me,” she said. “You’ll break me all over again.”
The words crawl up my throat like barbed wire, but they don’t make it out. All I can do is stare, my hand twitching weakly against hers, my pulse stuttering in the line taped to my arm.
Her tears spill fresh, sliding hot onto my skin.
“I thought I lost you,” she whispers, voice cracking. “I thought you left me again.”
