“Don’t let go,” I whisper, the plea raw, shocking me twice—once for saying it, once for meaning it.
His answering smile is small, stunned, equal parts gentle and dangerous. “Then don’t make me.”
29
ESME
He lowersme to float again, arms looped under my back so my spine is cradled by water and stone. The shift seats him fractionally deeper, drawing a gasp from me as my arms tighten around his neck. He still holds me suspended, trembling with the effort of remaining motionless, as if the single inch he’s gained already threatens the thin hold we have here.
We breathe together in that aching pause—inhale, hold, release—until the space between pulses disappears entirely. He folds down to kiss me, slow licks and softer bites, tongue stroking each word he won’t say aloud:Stay. Feel. Mine. Yours. Now.
Minutes slide by—three, five, who knows? Time feels broken now. The cave’s glow turns molten where it touches our skin; steam kisses sweat from our collarbones, creating new rivers that never reach the water below. I lose track of whose shivers begin where, of the space between us, of how long his body has been held so close to mine.
Then the cave shudders around us, lights flickering, stone trembling, as though the spell has remembered its duty.
Dayn’s arms loosen around me, unhooking from my back as though they were never meant to stay. I feel the exact instant our bodies separate—an ache that isn’t pain but a hollow carved into my spine. One heartbeat I am wrapped around him, still inside the endless hush of our joined bodies, and the next I am sliding free. The water folds between us like a curtain, suddenly cold where his skin isn’t touching. He steadies me on the ledge, palms steady but retreating.
“Time’s run out,” he murmurs, voice pitched low, almost apologetic.
I rise shakily to my feet and for a second all I can do is stand there, naked and streaming, lungs shuddering in and out. As he climbs out of the pool too, the turquoise light paints rivers along his collarbones, steam drifting off them like ghosts leaving.
I feel hollow—no pain, no triumph, no plan—just a raw, scraped-out space beneath my ribs. My skin hums, every nerve ending stunned. The ring on my finger pulses once, twice, then steadies into quiet warmth.
He doesn’t speak either. His eyes are too steady, wide pupils ringed with damp amber. I see something in them I refuse to recognize as worry. We stare at each other across four arm-lengths of space, both breathing like we’ve surfaced from drowning.
His gaze tracks the full length of my body, follows it, as though he wants to commit every detail to memory, then lifts back to my face.
His lips part, close. No vow. No taunt. No tease. Just the raw fact of us: two killers turned gentle, both undone by the same hour. I want to wrap my arms across my chest—the old reflex of armor—but the motion feels pointless. He has already seen everything, down to the pulse that still stutters behindmy jaw.
I finally push out a breath that tastes of him and saltwater. “What happens when the sand starts again?”
The question scrapes, too small for what I really mean: what happens to what we just became?
He tips his head, droplets hanging from his lashes.
“Whatever you decide,” he says, voice hoarse but level. “Nothing more.”
It should comfort me. It does the opposite: I feel the moment slipping, edges curling in like burning paper. He stands still, letting me look, letting me remember. I rub the ring against my thumb, which feels like the one small anchor left.
“One hour,” I whisper. “Not enough.”
“More than we had yesterday,” he answers, so quietly the water swallows half the words.
I nod once, eyelids burning. I draw the smallest possible breath and straighten my back.
“But Esme,” he says, his tone shifting, turning graver. “Remember what I told you. This is still the trial. A construct. And while I’ve been able to bend it—just enough, and only for a while—it is still a game I did not create and you willingly entered, thus bound to a framework I did not design. Yet, I also willingly entered it.”
For the first time I can remember, his eyes look… genuinely remorseful. My heartbeat quickens as he steps away from me, the space between us cooling further while he reaches for his clothes. “So, I cannot change what comes next,” he concludes. “Just try to remember that, in the real world, you have a choice… Try to remember that when this ends.”
Reality warps around me. One minute I'm standing in Dayn's intimate, luminescent cave, and the next, I'm fully clothed again, standing on a vast, barren plateau that stretches to a horizon ringed with jagged mountains.
Sharp-edged obsidian stretches beneath my boots and aboveme is a sky the color of infected blood. Strange pillars of black glass rise from the ground. The air here is thin and metallic, each breath scraping my lungs raw. The grotto is already gone. Dayn is gone. The taste of him is still on my tongue when the air hardens into the reek of iron and something burning.
I spin, heart clawing my ribs.
And he’s here.
Ten paces away, barefoot on broken obsidian, wearing the same black fatigues he peeled off in the cave. But his eyes are wrong—amber drained to sulfur yellow, pupils slitted wide like a hawk scenting prey.
