Still fighting.
Seytan steps closer. Close enough that I can see the faint reflection of the rotor lights in her eyes. Close enough that this feels personal.
“You will wake,” she tells him, calm as a diagnosis. “Eventually.”
She looks down at the rest of us, scattered and twitching and falling.
“And when you do,” she adds, “you will remember this and the consequences that follow.”
My vision tunnels. The helicopter’s roar becomes a distant animal sound, something huge and uninterested. The concrete is cold against my cheek. I taste blood and rain and oil.
Donnelly’s voice is thrilled.
See? Told you. The game always had rules.
Silas is sobbing.
Please. Please wake up. Please?—
The last thing I see is Nightshade’s hand clawing uselessly at the ground.
The last thing I hear is the click.
Then nothing at all.
COLD ENOUGH TO BURN
Raise Hell - Dorothy
Kookaburra
The forest breathes like an animal around me, damp air clinging to my skin as I run. Every shadow looks alive, every flicker of moonlight a trick of movement at the corner of my eye. The ground is slick with moss, roots twisting underfoot like veins beneath thin skin. Behind me, I can hear him–steady, unhurried, almost amused. He doesn’t have to rush. He knows I’ll stumble. He always knows. The sound of his boots on the forest floor is rhythmic, patient, a heartbeat chasing my own.
Branches catch my arms, thorns scrape at my legs, but I don’t stop. The cold air burns my throat and I can taste metal in the back of my mouth, copper and panic. He calls out, voice lowand coaxing, the same tone he used to use when telling me not to be afraid.
“You can’t hide, little bird.” The words curl through the dark like smoke. I can’t tell if it’s a threat or a promise. I tell myself to keep running, to not listen, but part of me is listening, part of me always has been.
The trees thin. Moonlight breaks through, turning the world silver for a moment–long enough for me to see the rise of earth ahead, the gash of a fallen trunk, the glint of water pooling between roots. I take another step and my foot catches.
The world tilts.
I hit the ground hard, the breath slamming out of me. Dirt fills my mouth, cold and wet. Before I can push up, hands close around my wrists, firm but not cruel. The weight above me is solid, heavy with heat, and I twist, expecting the voice, the knife, the laugh.
It isn’t him.
Hatchet’s face looms above mine instead, eyes dark and unreadable in the half-light. For a heartbeat I freeze, confused, my body still caught between terror and instinct. He doesn’t speak–he never does–but his breath ghosts over my cheek and his hold steadies me rather than traps. The air changes.
The pounding in my chest slows, shifting from flight to something else entirely. The moment stretches thin as wire. His weight pins me to the earth, and the cold seeping through my clothes meets the heat between us until I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
My body ignites.
I move first, a wordless permission, a reaching. His mouth finds mine, hungry and searching, as my fingers dig into the soil beneath us. The fear dissolves into heat that pools low in my belly, replaced by something heavier, more primal.
My clothes fall away. His skin against mine is rough bark and velvet moss. The smell of pine sap mingles with our sweat. The taste of rain and salt on his neck is euphoric. His hands map my body, calloused palms catching on soft flesh as I arch against him.
The forest quiets around our breathing, our movements creating a rhythm as ancient as the trees. He fills me completely, and I’m trembling, climbing toward something that feels like falling, like flying, like?—
I think of all the times I’ve been touched without care, all the ways pain has been mistaken for affection, and realise this–this weight, this silence–is the closest I’ve ever come to peace.
