Outside his mind, the beach revealed the horrors and the answers he’d once wanted, but no longer. None of it mattered without her.
Augustus clawed back into his memory, and in it, he was kissing her face everywhere the sunlight glowed while memorizing the curves of her body. Her hip fit perfectly in the palm of his hand.
“I wish,” he whispered, “that I could remember all of our firsts. Is it possible they were as perfect as this?”
“If we remembered all those times, we wouldn’t recognize just how perfect this time is.”
He smiled. “Wise, as always.”
Augustus kissed her and put every word he wanted to say, every emotion he couldn’t explain, into the caress of his tongue against hers. Made sure she felt it in every caress of his fingers. How would he ever be able to express the complete madness behind such simple words? It was impossible.
I love you, I love you, I love?—
Thorne’s voice interrupted with a vengeance.“I have a head in my possession, a head in my possession, a head in my possession?—”
Augustus screamed. Not in fear. Not in pain. But with every ghost in his throat. And it broke the hands from his arms. He collapsed to his knees.
Everyone was watching him?—
Fuck them. Fuck them all.
She was dead.
Selene was dead.
Tristan Thorne knelt in front of him, one arm propped by a knee. “Is my little garden getting to you?”
It was all noise at this point. The scent of rotting skin, the indifference of Thorne and his crew.
He hated it and he was devastated and everything was bad, bad, and worse…but she was gone. The world had been a roar in his head until she stood in front of him on that road in Perean. Then it was awhisper. She had softened all his sharp edges. She’d hated him at times, and there were moments he thought she might walk away, but then she’d look at him like he was worth understanding. Worth the battles, the duty, the ache of potentially living through a momentjust like this.
He thought he had been prepared.
He wasn’t.
And the manresponsible was a hair’s breadth away.
Augustus barreled forward, and his body gave a satisfying jolt against Thorne’s. He didn’t need his wrists free to make this count. Make him feel this pain and rage. All he needed were his fists and the determination to make Tristan Thorne bleed. Draw blood from him the way he had from Selene and his father.
With Thorne on his back, Augustus rose onto his knees, raised his fists, and the man didn’t flinch. Didn’t so much as blink.
Augustus brought his fists down like a hammer, and Thorne shifted his weight, absorbing the hit.
He fisted Thorne’s shirt and raised him until their noses nearly touched. “You killed her,” Augustus seethed through clenched teeth.
Thorne grinned, and his eyes shone with sunlight. “Ididn’t kill anyone.”
He’d just ordered it. Selene’s head for a stack of coins.
Augustus was too furious to say as much and raised his hands for another blow, this one arcing sideways into Tristan’s cheek. He heard something crack and vaguely felt a fresh delivery of pain shoot through his hand.
“You took her from me,” Augustus said.
Tristan laughed—laughed—even as blood spilled from the corner of his mouth. “I’ve lost more.”
Then they were a tangle of limbs and furious fists, elbows, and rage. This wasn’t a battle for survival, but true violence, primal and ugly, born of too many ghosts. This was two men at war, grief against grief, rage against revenge.
And neither willing to let go.
