The choice is mine.
Darkness presses in from all sides.
Not just the absence of light, but something deeper. A void. Vast and unfeeling. I drift in it, weightless, untethered, nothing but consciousness unraveling in the silence of my own undoing.
It feels… familiar.
Not in the nostalgic way—no warmth, no comfort—but in a terrible way. The kind of familiarity that whispers of loss, of slipping through the cracks of existence. Of fading. Of vanishing into nothing but a breath of what I used to be.
I think I’m dying again.
Except… if I were dying, I wouldn’t feel this. I wouldn’t feel anything.
And I feel something.
Hands.
Warm. Real.
They slide over my skin—fingertips tracing my arm, skimming the curve of my shoulder, ghosting down my spine. Another, rougher set, settles firm against my waist, pulling me closer. A third presses flat against my sternum, right where my heartshould be beating. Heat spills from every point of contact, spreading through me, pushing back the void, pushing back the cold.
I let out a sharp breath. Or at least, I think I do. It feels real, but so does the nothingness swallowing me whole, and I don’t know what’s real anymore—
A voice cuts through the dark.
Murmurs my name.
Cassian.
He was dying…
But I hear him.
How is that possible?
His voice is rough, low, threaded with something raw beneath the usual detachment. Something almost furious. But not at me.
Forme.
“You’re still here,” he mutters, like he needs to convince himself. His thumb brushes along my jaw, his grip tightening just a little—like he’s afraid I’ll slip away.
Another voice. Softer.
Nathaniel.
“Not enough,” he says. His touch follows Cassian’s, tracing down my side, dipping lower. “She’s not fully back.”
“She will be,” Talon says, his mouth so close to mine.
The words shouldn’t make my stomach twist the way they do. Shouldn’t send heat curling low in my belly, shouldn’t make my pulse stutter. But they do.
Because I’m not just feeling warmth now.
I’m feeling hunger.
And it's not only mine.
The four of us have been playing this game of push and pull from the beginning. Wanting without being able to touch. Reaching for something we could never have. And in chasing theimpossible, we’ve kindled something deep inside each of us—something burning, something dangerous.
