Her body hangs loose in my hands, her head rolling forward, hair spilling everywhere. I push it back with a shaking hand. Her eyelids flutter.
“Kas, she’s drugged. She’s alive, Kas. Stop.” Adrien says quickly, already cupping her face in both hands and forcing her eyes open. Relief hits my body like a heavy trunk and my vision blurs.
Fuck.
Okay.
She’s alive.
Marko is already at the chain, fingers moving fast, the metal rattling as he unclips it from the floor. The moment the chain is free, dangling from her wrists, I pull her against my chest, arms locked so tightly around her limp body that my muscles tremble. I bury my face in her damp neck—she smells like fear and cold metal and something that ishers,something I’ve been dreamingof for four weeks straight. I press my ear to her pulse to ground myself.
Four weeks.
Four weeks of imagining her dead, drowning, broken, screaming for someone who would never come.
And now she’s here.
“Baby,” I breathe into her hair. The word comes out ruined, cracked open, more plea than sound. “I’m here. I’m right here.”
Wild sobs start to shake with my chest, my tears already wetting her hair. “I’m so sorry baby, I’m so sorry.”
I press her closer, as if my body can shield her from everything that ever touched her in this place.
“I’m so sorry.”
My chest pulls tight, the pain in my ribs sharp, but I don’t care. I need her weight, her warmth, the proof she’s not a ghost I’ve been chasing in my head.
“Baby, I’m so—”
“Kasien—” she mumbles, barely audible, her eyes still half closed.
I cup her face, my forehead dropping to hers, tears spilling into the corner of my mouth.
“I’m here,” I say through a heavy sob. “I’ll never leave you again, I promise.”
“I came—back,” she says, words swirling slowly, “—the next day.”
“What?”
She’s obviously still half under the weight of whatever they gave her. She inhales, as if she’s trying to force the words out with every bit of strength she has left.
“I came back—but you were gone.”
Her face hangs loose in my hands as she tries to talk. I swallow, trying to make sense of what she’s talking about.
“It’s okay. You’re okay. I’m here,” I say eventually, lifting her up, the chain rattling from her weak wrists.
Her face sinks into my neck.
“I came back the next day,” she repeats as I’m trying to make her comfortable in my arms. “But the mansion was gone. Burnt,” she adds.
I freeze when I realize what she’s talking about. I look down at her, her eyelids half opened, searching for me.
My brows furrow with another wave of tears I can’t seem to hold back.
She came back.
She came back?
