Heartache drowns me. Makes my words a hitching rasp. “I love you, Dommik.”
His gaze bores in. “You own my heart, Malina.”
We shiver beneath our shaken confessions.
The fog starts to dissipate, like it’s being forced to pull back. From the corner of my eye, I see them. The monstrous fae come to spread their evil.
“They can’t touch us,” Dommik murmurs, gaze unwavering, touch calm and still. “Keep looking at me.”
I nod, and then I let the terror exhale away. Let my mind go still. Because I am exactly where I need to be. Where I want to be.
Willingness.
“I’m ready.”
I close my eyes with a sigh. I hear Dommik suck in a sob.
And then, with my assassin’s help, I push the blade straight into my heart.
It pierces, cold and utterly agonizing.
The most fatal pain I could ever comprehend.
My breath yanks out of me. Eyes flare open as I rip the dagger back out.
The fatal pain storms. Icicle shards pouring out with the puncture. Damning damage of my life left to flood.
Time stops with my frantic gaze. Frost gathering at my lids and lips. Words caught in an icicle throat while snow flakes from my skin.
I stare at Dommik with wide eyes…and I feel my organ begin to fail.
Last beats, beating for my people. To do thisonething right.
To be exactly what my kingdom needs.
My knees crash to the ground, and my blood spills over the gray bridge. It hisses and steams on impact, even as shards of ice fall from my palms.
Dommik goes down onto his knees with me. Tears running down his dappled face. Then he wraps his hand around minewhere I’m still holding the dagger, and he plunges it into his heart too.
When the roaring fae are only feet away, when my blood has soaked the surface and Dommik takes his last breath, the bridge suddenlyexplodes.
It shatters like ice. Obliterating in a blink.
The bridge doesn’t break this time. Itunmakes.
It’s blaring and blinding. Light and mist and sound and void—all of it erupting out and sucking in.
Dommik and I are thrown off the gray surface that no longer exists. Leaving life behind with the final drops of our unbeating hearts.
With the last spot of vision, with our bodies wrapped tightly around each other, Dommik and I fall into the void.
Into the death.
Willingly.
As shadow and freeze, we embrace it together.
Then, the bridge is no more.
