The thought made me sick. It made me want to rip the veins from my arms just to bleed him out. I hated myself for the blood I carried. I hated the part of me that belonged to him.
I sank into the corner of the cell, knees pulled tight to my chest, the damp stone biting into my back. My hands clawed at my skull as if I could dig the memories out with my fingers. My jaw ached from the strain of holding back the scream that wanted to tear free.
I hated Salvatore for what he’d done.
I hated myself for letting him live.
But more than either of us, I hated Severen.
Because if my blood was his, then maybe he was right—maybe I was never meant to be anything but a monster.
The door creaked open on a whisper.
For a breath, I thought it was another dream, one of the cruel ones that started with mercy before ending in blood. But then a shadow slipped through the light, small, trembling, real.
“Lazarus.”
Her voice was barely audible. But it was hers.
Amara.
My pulse stuttered. I didn’t trust my eyes. She was supposed to be gone, swallowed by Severen’s monsters, reduced to ash or memory. Yet the torchlight caught her face—pale, bruised, and breakable—and for the first time in weeks, something like life clawed its way into my chest.
“Amara…” The name broke from me like a prayer that had waited too long, and I pushed myself to my feet as she stepped closer.
“Quiet,” she whispered. “They’re changing watch. We don’t have long.”
But before I could stop myself, before my mind could catch up to what my heart already knew, I pulled her into me.
The air left both our lungs. She fit against me perfectly, like she’d been created to fill the hollow this place had gouged out of me. Her hands clutched the back of my neck, grounding me in a reality I hadn’t believed in for days.
“Amara…” I said again, voice splintering.
Her head tilted forward until our foreheads met, breath mingling—uneven, fragile. The world fell quiet. I could taste the fear still clinging to her skin, the salt of tears she hadn’t shed. My thumb drifted along her cheek, slow and reverent, tracing the fading bruise as if I could take its hurt into myself. She didn’t move. Neither did I. I only breathed her in, afraid that if I blinked, she might vanish.
Then she rose onto her toes, and our mouths met.
It was a collision of everything we had been forced to bury.
The kiss burned. It tasted of salt, smoke, and everything this place had stolen. Her breath trembled against mine, and for a moment, the world shrank to the shape of that single touch—desperate, furious, alive.
The shadows shifted at the edge of the room, whispering like witnesses. I didn’t care. For that heartbeat, nothing existed but her—the proof that something pure had survived this darkness.
When we broke apart, she didn’t step back. Her breath still trembled against my lips, tasting of ashes and the sweetness of her skin.
“I thought you were gone,” I whispered into her hair. “I thought I’d lost you.”
She lifted her face, eyes glinting in the low light of the oil lamp. Her hand rose, rough from work and bound in linen, and traced the bruises along my jaw as if she could wipe away everything this place had done.
“They took me,” she said, her voice shaking with fury more than fear. “They hurt me, Lazarus. They beat me until I couldn’t stand. But I survived.” Her jaw tightened, the flicker of the lamp catching the bruise at her throat. “I’ll never be gone.”
Before I could speak, her fingers brushed my mouth, silencing me.
“There’s more,” she whispered. The words trembled, but the steel beneath them was unbreakable. “Things you don’t know about this prison—about what Severen’s doing here.” Her gaze darted toward the corridor. “But not now. The guards will return. I must tend to your wounds before they see you’re missing. You both must come—quickly.”
Her words sank through me like a blade.
The torch sputtered, and the shadows along the wall seemed to lean in to listen. The air itself felt alive, thick with the weight of secrets.
