Tears carve tracks down my cheeks, and I force myself to look away, to keep moving. If I stare too long, the wounds gape wider. If I linger, I’ll drown in them. But I can’t shut them out. The storm knows me—itisme—and it’s offering me back to myself in jagged pieces. It wants me to bleed with every wound I’ve ever carried.
I almost do. The taste of iron fills my mouth, my ribs ache with the pressure, and I want to let the storm swallow me whole. But I don’t. I take the pain and use it. Every memory it throws at me fuels another step. I refuse to stop long enough to let the storm, let myself, tear me apart.
The camp bleeds into view through curtains of sand and fire. I stumble forward, breaking through the last wall of the storm into what’s left of the kingdom. The wind drops, sudden and brutal in its silence, and the only sound is the ragged chorus of moans and crying that leaks through the smoke.
Shredded tents flap like torn flesh. Pieces of wood lay broken, snapped, scattered. Small fires lick at tattered fabrics and light up the eye of the storm in a tangerine glow. Ash drifts like snow, brushing my arms and sticking in my lashes.
Guards and other members of the kingdom haul people clear of the rubble. Solara stands on the lip of the dais, jaw slack. Her arms are wrapped around her sister as they survey the wreckage. Zephara presses a hand to her mouth to cover her sobs. The court clusters in tight knots, twittering like frightened birds,eyes darting between the queens and the debris. From the stage, the Player hurls herself forward, red paint smeared across her cheek, her shirt ripped. She limps toward the shocked queens, flailing her arms, saying something I don’t catch because my attention is focused back on the stage.
Tarek and Dav lift planks of wood from the collapsed pyre off a body. When the last beam comes free, Declan’s shape comes into view. His chest lifts in shallow, fragile hitches.
“No. No, no, no.” I don’t feel the splinters of wood that bite into my bare feet as I scramble forward. Smoke claws at my throat, and ash streaks my skin as I climb onto the stage, clambering over the wreckage like none of it matters.
Because it doesn’t. Only he does. Only Declan.
I drop to my knees beside him. Blood seeps through his shirt in a dark stain that spreads like ink across the fabric. His face is pale beneath streaks of sweat and dirt. His hair is plastered to his forehead, his lip split, his mouth trembling around the edges of another breath.
Tarek and Dav keep pulling wood off him, fingers gray with ash, palms scraped and bloody. Declan blinks at me, the corners of his mouth trying for a crooked smile. “Thought Dav would be happy finding me like this,” he says, voice paper thin.
Dav grunts as he and Tarek lift another piece of wood and throw it off the stage. “I do not delight in bloodletting if it’s not by my own hand.” His mouth is tight as he bends down and squeezes Declan’s shoulder.
Hot blood slicks my palms as I press against the wound. “Tarek, Dav, please. You have to help him. Wehave to—”
They share a look that wrenches the air from my lungs.
Dav’s jaw sets. “There’s nothing we can do for him.”
“Perhaps the healer…” Tarek’s words fade as he looks down at Declan then back up to Dav.
“We can try.” Dav gives Declan’s shoulder another squeeze before the two men jump off the stage and rush into the mess of injured bodies and wreckage.
“I am so sorry,” I sputter when Declan and I are alone.
The last conversation we had—the confession that left me gutted—feels so far away now. I thought I needed distance, thought I needed time to make sense of it, of us. But all that feels small and foolish in the face of him, broken and bleeding.
Declan’s dark irises find me, and even like this, even when he’s wounded and on the brink of death, they burn through me. He drags his hand across the sand-covered stage with a slow, stubborn effort until his fingers find mine.
“You’re here now.” His swallow is thick, and he winces on his next inhale. “That’s what matters.”
“Don’t talk. Save your strength—” I choke on the rest as tears prick my eyes, stream down my cheeks.
He tries to push himself up, and the movement seems to take every ounce of strength he has left. “I have to tell you—”
“Shh.” I shake my head frantically. “Declan, please.” I wrap my hands around his and squeeze like it’s the last time I’ll ever get to.
“Amanda, you need to hear this.” He sucks in a breath and bares his teeth against another wave of pain.“You’ve been acting your whole life. You think other people, the universe broke you.” His breath shudders out. “But they didn’t.”
I shake my head so hard it rattles my teeth. “Stop. Don’t—we don’t need to talk about that now.”
He squeezes my fingers and wets his cracked lips. “You broke yourself. You…walled off. Never let anyone get close enough to stay.”
A sob tears through me. I bend over him and press my forehead to his. “Please, Declan. Please, don’t leave me.”
“I wish you would have let me love you.”
The words land and split me open. Tears come hot and sudden. They run down my cheeks and drip onto his skin until they streak his face. I want him to be wrong, but the truth is, I wish I would have let him love me when I had the chance. I wish I would have loved myself.
“You still can. I want to let you.” I lean down and kiss him, my lips damp with copper and salt. “Stay with me, please.”
