Shaking.
“Look at me,” Kimberly says fiercely, her palms pressed flat against my cheeks, thumbs digging into my jaw hard enough to hurt. “Stay with me. Choose me.”
I try to look at her.
I can’t.
My vision keeps sliding off her face like oil on glass.
“I need you here,” she says, her voice breaking and not breaking at the same time. “Not out there. Not in whatever hell they built inside your head. Here. With me.”
My knees hit the floor.
I don’t remember falling.
My hands are shaking so hard my weapon clatters out of my grip and skids down the corridor.
“Tur,” she says again, softer now but no less unyielding. “Breathe with me.”
I drag air into my lungs.
It hurts.
Everything hurts.
“Good,” she murmurs. “Again.”
I breathe.
Again.
Again.
The red recedes.
The jalshagar coils back down out of my throat and spine and jaw, not gone, not asleep, just… contained.
My vision clears enough to lock onto her eyes.
Dark.
Bright.
Terrified.
Unflinching.
“Don’t go away from me like that,” she whispers.
“I almost killed everyone,” I rasp.
“You didn’t,” she snaps. “You stopped. That matters.”
My hands are still trembling.
My shoulder is bleeding badly.
The corridor stinks of burned flesh and ozone and fear.
