“Bella,” he starts, like he’s going to argue again.
“No,” I cut him off, my voice rough. “Listen to me for once.”
He shuts his mouth. His hand is still on my face. It helps.
“I know what you are,” I say. “I know what your mother is. I know what your world looks like. I have seen enough blood in the last few days to last me a lifetime. I am not stupid. I know this is not a happy ending.”
He flinches a little at that.
“But when I thought I was dying in that parking lot,” I continue, “the thing that scared me most was not that I might never see another sunrise. It was that I might never see you again. I heard you say you loved me and my brain went,oh. That makes sense. Like it had been waiting for the words to catch up to something that was already true.”
His eyes darken. “I meant it,” he says.
“I know,” I say. “I love you too.”
The words come out quiet, but they feel huge. Like stepping off a ledge and trusting the fall.
His fingers tighten just a little on my cheek. For a second he just looks at me, as if he’s committing my face to memory. Then he leans in.
This kiss is not careful. The last one in the hospital was soft and hesitant, full ofmaybeandwhat if. This one is all the things we did not say while guns were pointed at us. It’s relief and anger and grief and the stupid, stubborn joy of still being alive.
I rise on my toes to meet him, hands fisting in the front of his shirt. He tastes like adrenaline and the cold air, like everything terrifying and everything I want.
When we finally break apart, we’re both breathing hard. He rests his forehead against mine for a second, eyes closed.
“You are making a terrible choice,” he murmurs.
“Probably,” I agree. “But it’s mine. And I’m tired of being pushed around like a piece on a board.”
The terminal door opens behind us.
“Hey!” Selene’s voice carries across the tarmac. “Somebody want to tell me why there are shell casings out here?”
We turn.
She’s coming down the small ramp from the building, coat flapping in the breeze, eyes scanning for trouble. Lily is on her hip, arms wrapped tight around her neck, half-asleep, thumb in her mouth.
I feel Aleksander tense.
He doesn’t want Lily to see any of this. Not the blood. Not Nikolai’s body.
“Stay here,” he says to me quietly.
I nod and let him go. He walks toward them quickly, putting his body between them and the worst of the view.
Lily spots him first. Her head lifts and her whole face changes.
“Papa,” she mumbles, reaching for him.
Selene shifts her weight and hands her over without comment. “Here,” she says. “She has questions. I lied. You’re welcome.”
He takes Lily and she immediately buries her face in his shoulder, small hand curling into his collar. He turns just enough that her line of sight is the terminal and the plane and not the ground behind him.
“Don’t come any further,” he tells Selene.
She stops where she is, eyes flicking past him. Her expression hardens when she sees the still shape on the tarmac.
“Well,” she says softly. “That answers that.”
