He rips at the material strapping him to the stretcher, somehow tearing through it. Within a heartbeat, he lurches toward me, catching the hand I pressed to his jaw, pulling me toward him.
My reflexes are slow. Evidence of how tired I am.
Before I can move, his arms close around me, crushing me up against his chest. We’re both now kneeling on the hard stones. Somehow, I’ve managed to extend my left arm, holding my power away from his body, my forearm aching from the effort to avoid touching him with it.
That discomfort is nothing compared to the anguish of his body pressed to mine.
I’m hard up against all the cold metal I fused to his chest and it’s slowly tearing me apart.
A scream of pain rises to my lips.
How could I have done this to him?
He would have chosen death over this.
His roar obliterates the agony raging through me. “You were meant to leave me!”
And yet, he’s holding me as if he never wants to let me go.
His right hand is softly cradling my head; his left hand is pressed to my lower back. His cheek rests against mine—his human cheek, the gentler side of his face—and his lips brush the edge of my jaw.
“You were meant to leave me, Asha,” he murmurs, his speech slurring now. “I wanted to do… one good thing…”
My right hand is pressed up against his heart, that arm folded between us. Beneath my palm, I sense the slow beats of his heart, and suddenly, I’m whisked back to the very first moment that I ever touched him.
I tried to use my power on him, despite the fact that I didn’t have a hammer or medallions at the time, and when I pressed my palm to his chest, all I felt was the heavy beat of his heart, along with the damp of sweat and blood.
But now I wonder… in that moment… how much was concealed from me beneath his cloak of blood?
Did I miss the way his hand softened around my wrist or the way his heart jumped when I touched him, or the way he looked at me so unguarded in that moment?
I try to speak around the sob choking my throat. I need to tell him what I’ve done to him, because he can’t see the metal and he doesn’t yet seem aware of it. He must be in terrible pain, even worse than mine, but he must believe it’s from his wounds.
Even as I try to force sound through my lips, his body is rapidly growing heavier against me, his head slowly dropping to my shoulder, resting in the crook of my neck.
Whatever burst of energy allowed him to lurch up off the stretcher seems to be fading as quickly as it arose. His body is fast becoming a crushing weight that I could never support without the strength the medallion gives me.
He mumbles against my neck, his fading speech painfully coherent, even though I wish I couldn’t hear or understand him, and I squeeze my eyes shut as if doing so could block my ears.
“I wanted you to be free of me. Precious Asha…”
The final heaviness of his body tells me he’s unconscious again.
Hot liquid fills my eyes.
I can’t choke back my sob any longer.
Somehow, despite the cold energy cloaking my heart, I can still feel this pain.
Empathy, kindness, compassion… All of those are stripped from me, butthispain?
Oh, pain is a constant now.
And so is anger.
I want to rage at him for trying to push me away. I want to hate him for all the years he treated me like an enemy.
More than anything, I want to force him to peel back all the shields and cloaks he’s layered around his heart.
