The trees blur at the edge of my vision, and the ground tilts beneath my feet. I stumble forward, boots catching on a root I didn’t see. I barely catch myself against a tree.
Get to the car. You have to get to the car.
I push off the tree and force myself further, but my legs are shaking now. My hands won’t stop trembling. The cold isn’t just outside anymore; it's spreading rapidly inside of me like a disease. My vision narrows—the world shrinks to a tunnel, and I feel like I'm falling backward through my own skull.
My heartbeat thumps loudly in my ears.Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
Why can’t I breathe? I feel so woozy?—
My knees buckle, and I hit the ground hard. My hands shoot out to brace my fall. The impact jars my wrists, but even while lightning races up to my elbow, the questions won’t stop.
What if justice isn’t what I wanted?
What if I just wanted pain?
What if I’m the monster?
The thought cracks something in my chest, and suddenly I’m drowning in it—the unbearable fucking emptiness of surviving when she didn’t.
I claw at the zipper of my coat, yanking it open. The cold air hits my chest, but it doesn’t help. My head swims, and my eyelids fall shut.
No. Not here. Not like this.
I try to stand, but my body won’t listen anymore.Maybe if I just close my eyes for a few seconds?—
Andrik-
I’m running before I register the movement, my lungs burning with panic I’ve never known.
“Nai’thar veskae,” I snarl under my breath.
She drops to her knees first, catching herself at the last possible second. Her chest heaves as she fights for air that won’t come. I can hear her gasping from here. She claws at her coat like she’s trying to tear her way out of her own skin.
She’s breaking, and I’m not close enough yet.
Her arms give out, and her body tips sideways, teetering like a marionette with its strings cut.
I catch her before her head hits the ground—one arm beneath her shoulders, the other sweeping beneath her knees as her weight falls into me.
She’s unconscious. Her head falls against my chest, and my heart stutters. “Veyr’khalûn…kae veyr,” I whisper into her hair. (Sacred heart keep beating.)
I should have stepped in sooner and stopped this spiral before it shattered her.
I look down at her, taking in her face for the first time up close, and my breath catches.
She’s more beautiful than anything this forest has ever held. Her lashes are rimmed with frost—little shards of silver curled like they were carved from ice. Her pale cheeks are flushed from the cold and streaked with the remnants of tears the snow tried to erase. There's a smear of dirt across her jaw and a single feather caught in the dark strands of her hair—an iridescent blue-green that shimmers faintly even in the moonlight.
She's all fury and fire and earth-stained wildness when she's awake. But when she’s still like this—soft, and utterly unguarded—she glows. My very own beam of luminance wrapped in flesh.
She smells like a field full of honeysuckles, though his blood still clings to her skin, tainting the sweetness with something darker. I shift my hold, lifting her closer to my face. My hand rises without permission, brushing the hair from her cheek, just once.
My knuckle barely grazes her skin. She nestles closer to my chest, and a single word falls from her lips.
“Velorin,” she whispers. (I am safe with you.)
I hold my breath, terrified that even the rise and fall of my chest might shatter this impossible hallucination. How? How can she feel safe in the arms of a nightmare that just ended a life? I glance at the blood on her skin, and then at the soft parting of her lips. She is a riddle written in my own blood—one I don’t have the answer for.
“Thaev’ra saelûn…” I whisper. (Please don’t take her from me. Souldbond.)
