“Talon,” I rasp.
“Skye.” He squats down and immediately cups my cheek, careful with the spot just beneath where the gun burn seared my skin. “Are you okay?”
He looks half-mad, half-relieved, and entirely feral. The veins in his neck stand out, his chest rising and falling like he ranhere from hell itself. Dirt and blood streak his clothes, and he’s breathing like he’s been fighting since dawn.
“I’m okay,” I manage, forcing the words through my throat. “I’m okay. Are you?”
“Now I am.”
He lifts me like I weigh nothing and pulls me tight against his chest. His breath drags raggedly through my hair as he holds on, swaying a little, like he needs the motion to keep himself upright.
And then I see him.
Cassian.
He’s running toward us through the trees, wild-eyed and half-dressed. His whole chest is bare except for a single bandage slapped over his shoulder, and there’s a dark red bloom spreading at the center of it. His eyes look glassy, too bright and unfocused, until they land on me. The second they do, something inside him breaks.
“Skye,” he chokes out.
He reaches me before Talon can even think about letting go. He shoves past him and grabs me like he’s terrified I’ll vanish if he blinks. He buries his face in my hair and inhales like he’s trying to lock the scent into his bones, and then he starts kissing me everywhere at once. My forehead. My temple. My jaw. My fingers, one by one, like he’s counting proof.
“Cassian,” I whisper, trying to catch his face, trying to slow him down. “Hey. Hey. It’s okay.”
But he isn’t hearing me. His pupils are blown wide, his breathing uneven, and his hands shake as they move over me, my arms, my cheeks, my throat, like he’s searching for injuries he can’t stand to find. His mouth finds my knuckles again, pressing a kiss to each one like a vow.
“Skye,” he keeps saying, voice hoarse, part prayer and part curse. “Skye. You’re alive. You’re alive.”
“Cassian,” Talon says. “Easy, man.”
Cassian finally pauses long enough to press his forehead to mine, but something is off in the way he holds himself, something almost wrong. I lift my eyes to Talon, wordless, asking for an explanation.
“Nathaniel gave him something for the pain,” Talon mouths silently. “Cass is a bit… more than usual.”
I can see that. He would eat me if he could.
Nathaniel is the last one to arrive. His shirt clings to him, damp with sweat, and when he spots me he stops a few feet away, bent over with his hands on his knees, like the sight of me knocked the air out of him.
“Thank fuck,” he breathes. He lifts his gaze, and there is a haunted edge there I have never seen before. “We made it in time. I thought…”
He cuts himself off and swallows hard, and for a second he looks like he might lose it completely.
Cassian exhales at last
“Don’t disappear again,” he whispers.
I smile faintly and slip my arms from around him, my fingers reluctant to let go. When I finally turn toward the girls, it all feels a little bit unreal.
They are still frozen in place. Hailey’s eyes glisten, her lip trembling. Lila’s stare keeps darting between me and the men outside, wide and glassy, like her mind is still trying to catch up with the fact that I am standing here, breathing and talking.
“Told you,” I say quietly. “I’m going to save us.”
The monster they grew to be so scared off lies unconscious on the ground. No one could care any less about him.
For a moment, no one moves. Then Lila lets out a broken, startled laugh that comes out wrong, half sob and half hysteria. Hailey crumples forward and starts crying for real, and the sound cracks something open in all of us.
It’s over. We survived the nightmare.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch movement in the trees. Rhea is there with her Grim Reaper friends, half-hidden among the trunks, watching us in that quiet, impossible way they have. I give them a small nod of thanks, because they were the ones who led my men to me, and I do not forget what that cost. Even with gratitude in my chest, their presence lands like a warning.
