I feel it ignite.
My heart spikes and my ribs heave. Every tendon in my arms strains until something tears. Pain erupts so violently I nearly black out.
But I don’t.
I hold on.
Because she’s on top of me, and she’s bleeding, and she screamed like she was dying—and I can’t let that happen.
The chains snarl around me, but I heave against them anyway, a ragged roar ripping straight from my lungs. My muscles seize. My vision whites out. Something cracks—metal or bone, I don’t know—and I keep pulling, keep fighting, keep tearing myself apart because she’s here.
The right shackle snaps. Darkness floods the edges of my vision. My left hand slips free next, dripping blood.
I wrap both arms around her, barely functioning, and drag her into me, beneath me, around me. My entire body curls over hers, shielding her with whatever pieces of myself I still control.
Bullets rain around us like metal hail. Screams ricochet off stone. Men die. The hall fractures into a warzone. And I don’t let go. She came for me. She didn’t let me die alone.
I press my lips to her hair.
“I love you. If this is it—if this is all I get—I love you.”
She sobs, gripping me harder.
“No. Don’t say goodbye. I can’t lose you. Don’t you dare—don’t you dare go. I love you, Priest. I need you. Please!”
She loves me.
My arms tighten around her blood-soaked body as the world tilts. Everything goes dim—except her. The only goddamn thing that ever made me want to live.
And just before the dark takes me, my gaze locks on a figure cutting through the smoke—Arsen. Cornering Sterling with his rifle raised. Putting a bullet straight through his fucking chest.
Bright white light bleeds through my eyelids. The sterile sting of antiseptic burns my nose. Machines beep beside—each one counting out another second I shouldn’t still have.
Am I alive?
The thought barely forms before a dull weight on my chest pulls me back down. Not heavy. Just…grounding.
I force my eyes open. Ceiling tiles blur overhead. IV lines tug at my skin. My body feels like it’s been ripped apart and stitched back with glass.
And then I see her.
Asleep on me, her small body curled next to me. Her hands fisted into my gown over my heart. Her hair’s a tangled mess, smelling faintly of smoke and blood and her. She’s alive. She’s here.
My fingers twitch. The urge to touch her is so intense it’s a physical ache in my chest.
“She told a nurse she’d gut them if they tried to make her leave.” I don’t have to look to know the voice. Arsen. His voicecoming from a chair in the corner. “I intervened before they sedated her.”
I finally manage to turn my head toward him. His arms are crossed over his chest, face covered in cuts and bruises.
“You’re alive. Against all fucking odds.”
My gaze drifts back to Arlo on my chest, to the dark circles bruising the skin beneath her eyes.
“Guess I found something worth living for.”
Arsen is silent for a long moment. The only sounds are the beep of the machines and the faint rustle of the sheets as Arlo shifts in her sleep.
I drag in a breath, tasting blood at the back of my throat. “Where are we?”
