The next time I saw her, she was gone. Dead. Her blood was soaking the clay beneath her like the earth itself was trying to hold her.
And I’d had to live knowing that my last words to her were cruel ones. That the son she died remembering wasn’t the one she’d raised.
The guilt had teeth. It chewed through every thought, every prayer, until I didn’t know where the wound ended and I began.
“Why her?” The question escaped before I could stop it. My throat was dry, my voice raw. “She didn’t deserve to die.”
The sound echoed off the stone.
Across the cell, Salvatore stirred, his movements slow, stiff.
“Lazarus…”
His voice was rough, cracking through the silence like a splinter.
“I’m sorry about your mother. I lost my father, too.”
I looked up at him through the fever haze. His words reached me warped by the fever—muted, distant, gone before they touched anything real.
He hesitated, then said quietly, “We’ll get through this. Together.”
I shook my head. The word tore out before I could stop it.
“No,” I snapped, quick enough to sting the air.
“Don’t.” My voice trembled, thin and cutting. “Don’t fucking comfort me.”
I turned toward him. My blood was boiling. My hands were shaking. My throat felt like it was closing.
“You don’t get it,” I said. “You can’t.”
My voice broke apart, ragged and small.
“Your father?” I spat. “You hated him. You wanted him dead. You prayed for it. Don’t you dare sit there and compare that tothis.”
My chest heaved. My skin burned.
“I needed her.”
The words ripped out of me like something being torn from bone.
“My mother was everything.”
I dug my fingers into my scalp until my nails bit blood.
“She was my only parent, Salvatore—and now she’s gone.”
My breath hitched.
“Taken. Torn out of the world like she was nothing.”
The heat rose in my neck; I could taste salt and blood in my mouth.
“She’s dead because I wasn’t there. Because I left her alone.”
My voice cracked. I tried to breathe, but the air burned.
“I should’ve stayed. I should’ve protected her.” The words came faster, desperate, wild. “Instead, I walked away. I went to the beach. I fucking left her.”
