The floor rushes up.
But I don’t hit it.
Because Aria’s there.
She catches me, arms sliding under mine, dragging me down slow, soft. Her breath is ragged. Her hair’s falling loose, strands sticking to her cheeks where sweat and blood and maybe tears have left their mark.
“You stupid, beautiful son of a bitch,” she breathes, lowering me into her lap.
I try to smile. “Told you I’d handle it.”
“You’re bleeding out.”
“You’re welcome.”
She laughs—a broken, raw thing—and cups my face with blood-slick hands. Her thumbs trace the curve of my cheekbones. Her fingers tangle in the white mess of my hair.
“You’re not allowed to die,” she whispers.
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
Her face bends down to mine. Her forehead touches mine. Her breath is sugar and gunpowder. Her lips tremble.
“Don’t you dare leave me,” she murmurs.
And then she kisses me.
It’s not soft. It’s not sweet. It’s desperate, like she’s trying to keep my soul in my body with her mouth. Her lips press to mine, tasting of salt and pain and something dangerously close to love.
And gods help me... I kiss her back.
Because even if I bleed out in this hallway—if this is my last breath—I want it to taste like her.
I sink into her like gravity.
And for the first time in my violent, brutal, empty life...
I feel home.
CHAPTER 30
ARIA DAWSON
He lives.
Barely.
I can feel the thready pulse at his throat with every beat that scrapes past my fingertips like it's being dragged from the void by sheer spite. His skin is clammy beneath my palms, slick with blood and sweat and whatever cruel chemistry his Reaper body is unleashing in its frantic scramble to repair itself.
But he's breathing.
For now.
They cart him off the moment reinforcements sweep the hall, medics swarming like wasps around royalty. I follow as far as the threshold to the infirmary, and then I stop. Because watching Aebon Rexx—unbreakable, incorrigible, maddening—laid out on a slab with half his side torn open is something I can’t keep in my sightline without falling apart.
I turn before I do.
We don’t get time for grief. That’s a luxury for the dead.
