“Cassius,” I rasp.
His head turns a fraction.He finds me like a magnet finds north.“Stay… awake,” he gets out, thin as thread.
“I’ve got her bleeding controlled,” Sava calls to him without looking away from me.
His mouth twitches like he’s trying to nod.“Good… girl.”The words scrape.He sways.Nikola tightens his grip.
“Don’t leave me,” I scream.It comes out broken.
“Not… happening,” he breathes.“Not ever.”
“Load him!”Dominic barks.Cassius tries to dig his heels in, stupid, stubborn,mine.I lift my hand, two fingers, like I can reach out and touch him in the space between us.He lifts his, trembles, almost meets me across the dark.He keeps his eyes on me until the angle steals me from his sight.
“Eyes on me,” Sava says, face close, calm as a prayer.Her face doubles, then settles.She’s sharper than the rest of the world.She always is.
“Thisissurvivable,” she tells me.“You hear me?You are going to survive this.”
“Hurts.”
“I know.”She leans closer, and the sound of everything else slides away.“Count my breaths.”
I do.One.Three.Five.Anchor yourself, darling.Find a rhythm that isn’t the pain.Her hand never leaves my wound.The bleeding holds.The dark backs off one inch.And I keep breathing.
Lights strobe past.Pavement hums.The pressure on my side never lets up.My fingers curl in Sava’s jacket.Red-blazer checks the bandage with a look that makes no sense but still settles me.And as Dominic flies through the city, Logan sits quiet in the passenger seat.A beautiful, smug angel.My throat tips toward a laugh that’s mostly a sob.
“Tell me something magical,” I mumble.It feels important.
She thinks for a beat.“He is the strongest man I know,” she says, voice quiet enough to live in.“And I have never seen him look at anything the way he looks at you.”
The dark presses in.I push it back with the picture of his eyes when he first saw me in that room.With the way his hand shook and reached for me.With his voice and breath threaded through my ribs like stitching.
I count Sava’s breaths again.One.Three.Five.
“Stay,” someone says.Maybe Sava.Maybe me.I hook my pinky in Sava’s sleeve so I don’t float off the seat.I swallow copper.I stare at the ceiling until it stops moving.I am not dying.I repeat it until it sounds like truth.Until the black softens at the corners and turns into somewhere to rest instead of somewhere to disappear.
twenty-nine
I come back ugly.
Then the pain hits.Every sinew is on fire.My eyes drag open.Rope burns my wrists until I realize there’s no rope and Dmitry’s palm is pushing a field dressing onto my chest, all his weight holding it down.Doors slam.
“Derzhis’, bratan,” he grinds out.“Ne otklyuchaysya.”?*
“I won’t,” I manage.
Nikola has me under the arms.Marco’s holding my legs.They lift and my ribs scream.I hate this.Being carried.Being useless.
Vanilla hits my nose.Coffee.Strawberry shampoo that shouldn’t make sense in a place like this.It stakes me to the leather seat.
“Lindy,” I rasp.
My vision punches in and out.For a second I see her.Sava braced over Lindy, hand packing gauze, applying pressure.It’s so vivid I lunge to get to her.
“Careful,” Dmitry warns, pushing harder into my chest.“You tear that seal, you drown in your own blood.”The entry’s low left.If the seal slips, I’ve got ten breaths max before the wet gurgle starts.
I’m shut inside this fucking car, and still in my head, Lindy chokes when the gauze goes in and I buck again.I taught Sava to pack a wound the same way Leven taught me: fast, brutal, tight.I never taught Lindy to choose herself.Never thought I’d need to.She stayed in my lap and chose me.Bled for it.Saved me.
Nikola’s grip turns iron.“?????*,” he bites out.“She’s with Sava.”
