Then Thorne looked up at me, green eyes dimming, and forced a crooked smile. For a single second, we weren't in that compound. No. We stood in those woods after months of stealing cars together, the rain falling around us, our hands gripping onto each other as we blushed beneath moonlight. Young and reckless and teaching ourselves a new form of survival in simply holding onto each other.
Then I blinked, and that last little bit of light in his eyes went out. He didn’t even say anything; he just…left.
I told you, didn’t I? I kissed Thorne Creed at eighteen not knowing that one day he’d destroy me. That day had finally come.
?Thorne?
I don’t arrive anywhere. There’s no moment where I understand that I’m dead. There’s just a loosening, a thinning, like the world has been gently unfastened from me and I’m drifting through what remains. Time doesn’t move forward anymore. It folds. It loops. It spills. I’m everywhere I ever was all at once, and somehow it all feels quieter than it should. I thought there would be a reckoning. Instead there’s this soft, unbearable clarity, the kind you only get when nothing can be changed anymore.
I see my life not as a story but as a pattern. All the places I stood still so others could move. All the moments I absorbed without comment. All the times I stayed when leaving would’ve been easier and maybe smarter. I wasn’t brave about it. I didn’t think of it as sacrifice. I just knew how to hold things, how to make myself useful by just…being there.
They come back to me slowly. Arden first, because she changed the shape of everything without ever trying to. She was family in the way that isn’t possessive or wanting. She was bloodwithout blood. Survival without transaction. I loved her because she kept standing when she shouldn’t have been able to. Because she kept choosing to exist even when the world taught her not to. I loved Rafe too because he loved others like it was a rebellion, because he felt everything at full volume—even when the world had silenced him. And Kane. Fuck. I loved Kane—I loved my brother—because his anger was honest and alive and never small, and because despite that, he was never angry toward me. They weren’t separate to me. Creed. They were a constellation. I loved being part of that, the quiet center they orbited without realizing it.
I didn’t need them to love me back the same way. I never did. Loving them was enough. Being there was enough. Staying was enough. And maybe that’s why it hurts now in this strange, distant way. Not because I’m gone, but because I can finally see how much of myself I gave without ever keeping anything for later. There is no later. There’s just this drifting awareness of having been necessary. If there’s anything like regret left in me, it isn’t about dying. It’s about not being able to stay justonemoment longer. About not being there for the next thing they’ll face. About knowing that the shape I held for them will collapse and they’ll have to learn how to carry the weight I held themselves. I hope they don’t mistake my absence for abandonment. I hope they know I didn’t leave because I was done loving them. Never.
I think now about all the things I never said because they didn’t need saying. How I assumed there would be more time to keep holding things together. How I believed my role was infinite simply because it had lasted this long. But I wasthere, and I wastheirs, and I’d do it all again without hesitation. Kiss her. Hug my brother. Learn sign language. Fight at their sides, fight distantly, fightalways. Catch fire just by proximity to my little flame and dance in her warmth.
I loved, and Iwasloved. What a fucking miracle. It’s all I remember—them. Everything else, all that shit, it’s just gone, and so am I. Finally.
?Arden?
A scream ripped from me. The hallway tilted. The world lost its edges. One second Thorne was there as unmovable as gravity, and the next there was red spreading beneath my hands and the sick, impossible realization that my palms were pressed where his chest was permanently still. I remember thinking, absurdly, that I’d done something wrong. That if I pressed harder, if I said the right thing, the moment would rewind and fix itself.
My body just folded, instinct dragging me down to where he was. My hands shook violently as I clutched at his shirt, my fingers slick and useless. There was so much blood. I kept trying to push it back into him, but there was nothing left except his still chest and my moving one andviolence. I swung up from the ground and fired. I didn’t aim for heads anymore. Straight through their chests. Just like they dared to do to Thorne, to me, because there was a hole there now and I was bleeding and the only thing that would stitch it closed was—“Haldennnn!” I screamed. “Halden!” My nostrils flared at the smell of cigarsmoke, my eyes narrowing on a familiar number. Room 82. The fucking bastard. He knew exactly who had come for him.
I shoved the door open, stepped inside and everything in me went very, very still. Rafe covered the hall beyond, and I hated how small I immediately felt, how exposed. I swallowed hard, my jaw locking as I slowly swung the gun around, hearing the shift in the corner.
Halden sat in the same chair he used to when he watched Buyers rape me, casual as he smoked his cigar. His eyes were dull and dark as he looked me over clinically, cataloging what his asset had become. “I thought that was you under all that makeup,” he said.
Maybe I should’ve dragged it out, made a bigger deal of it,savoredthe moment, but I still had Thorne’s blood tacked under my nails, drying around my wrists, and—I screeched and rushed him, taking him to the ground, my fist slamming into his mouth. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”
He started laughing.
Thorne.
Tears burned hot and immediate, my throat tearing open as I screamed again, the sound scraping out of me as my fists came down over and over andoveron Halden’s face, skin giving, bone shifting. I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop. My hands moved like they weren’t mine anymore, like I’d finally been reduced to the most honest version of myself, snot dripping down my lip, blood slicking my knuckles, my vision tunneling until all that existed was impact and noise and the echoing truth beating against the inside of my skull:Thorne is dead. Thorne is dead. Thorne is dead.
Somewhere in the middle of it, I swear I heard a gun go off, a sharp, concussive bang that didn’t come from the room but from inside my head, like something misfired behind my eyes, and for a split second I was certain that was it, that I’d feel the bullet tearthrough me and everything would go white and merciful. But the pain never came. Instead the world began to tilt, angles sliding out of place, the floor drifting too far away, my body suddenly heavy and distant, like it was being gently disconnected from me piece by piece.
My fingers fumbled until they found my lighter by muscle memory alone, the small click of the flame sounding enormous in the silence that followed, and I lit Halden’s tie.Stay awake, I begged myself dimly, because watching him burn felt like the only anchor left to me, the only proof that time was still moving forward. Fire took him fast, his body catching like it had been waiting for it, flames racing greedily over fabric and flesh, and the smell hit me next, melted skin curling as I slid down the opposite wall, my knees giving out. My thoughts slowed to a syrupy drag, images bleeding into one another without order or logic, and somewhere beyond the crackle of fire and the ringing in my good ear, I swear I heard Thorne’s voice, not as memory but as presence, knocking from the other side of Death, calling out to me the way he always did when I drifted too far.You’re okay, little flame. I got you.The words looped and echoed, and I pressed my head back against the wall, eyes glassy, body slack.
Distantly, I felt the bomb detonate, but I didn’t care. I preferred the edge of death now. It was the closest I could get to Thorne.
?Rafe?
SECONDS AFTER EXPLOSION
When I was flung through the air, it felt like I was being launched through every moment I ever had with Thorne, like the very act of Arden's bomb detonating meant being faced with how I'd failed to keep my promise to Kane. I saw Thorne lazily smoking on the steps out by the courtyard at Viktor's, watching me beat up his brother and chuckling a little around his cigarette. Then I saw that night, one of my favorite fucking nights, where he joined Kane and I out back in the garden. We liked sneaking back there every now and then just to get a breath before we had to go back to pretending we were nothing but hollow men. The ravens had grown by then, and only one of them had stayed at that tree. It was like the damn bird knew how fucking lonely we got, how we needed it to hang out in that branch and just be there on our darkest days. The three of us sat there that night, sprawled out in the grass, passing Thorne's cig and a bottle of brandy that Kane had snagged. The brothers were on either side of me, messing with each other and laughing,shoving me around since I was trapped between them, and I'd...never felt so safe. It was like having two halves of this really fucking great whole just orbit around me like padding.
Now one of those halves was dead, and as my back cracked down against debris, my eyes stinging with dust as wire sparked above, ceiling lights knocked into perpetual sways like the pendulums of a cruel clock counting the seconds that dared to exist, I knew I would never forgive myself.Iwas the one who was supposed to have his back.Iwas the one who somehow missed that shot. Thorne was dead, and it was my fault.
But then my guilt was overshadowed by the single, torturous realization that in every direction I saw fire, but I didn't see my girl.
My eyes stung as I lifted from the rubble, the door to Room 82 hanging off its hinges. I ducked, covering my head as pieces of ceiling battered down before I was forced to hook my elbow over my nose and mouth, weaving between plumes of smoke and dust into Room 82. The toe of my boot hit something, and I took a breath before I looked down. The smallest amount of relief went through me at the sight of Halden’s burning corpse. Then I squinted, searching and searching before I finally saw her.Arden. She was curled up in the corner, her face covered in soot and her hands bloodied and limp. Her hair was singing, fire burning into her arms and legs, melting her clothes into her skin, and yet she wasn’t moving. She was just…staring. At nothing. I coughed, the act flaring the injury in my throat, and scooped her into my arms. Her limbs were limp as I ran us out. Rubble collapsed nearby, closing off too many exit routes. The bomb’s blast had thoroughly effected the foundational structure of the building.
I gently sat her down and ripped off my shirt in a fluid motion, batting out the fire from her skin and hair. I cupped her face, my heart cracking as I stared into her eyes and it didn’t seem like shewas looking back. She was vacant, and it terrified me more than finding her dead would have. I shook her shoulders gently. My eyes burned when she didn’t respond, but the fire was spreading fast. I gathered her back into my arms, cradling her to my chest, sprinting us through the maze of fire and falling debris. I caught flashes of it as I moved, corners where the makings of Creed still echoed, hallways we’d been dragged bleeding through, hope clutched in the sight of each other’s trails because it meant we were still holding on. All of it burned, every last place that had beaten us into Halden's perfect soldiers was finally collapsing in on itself. I looked down at her face as I ran, her lashes dark with soot, her mouth slack, her body too still against mine, and I begged her silently to look, to stay, but her eyes fluttered shut and her body sagged further, the fight bleeding out of her inch by terrifying inch.Please, baby, please, open those pretty eyes, the ones with my favorite fucking colors. Look at what you did, how strong you are,but she was gone, trapped deep inside herself. I tightened my grip, pressing her closer to my chest when I caught sight of familiar bodies ahead and slowed, pain radiating through my chest.
Everyone looked accounted for. Both Delgado brothers were injured, leaning into Heath and Monty. Grace and Florence were hugging each other. But I didn’t understand why they were just standing there until I shouldered through and saw Thorne’s body.
