Page 132 of A Requiem of Fire and Ice

Moving further into the room, I sit beside her, the satchel resting on my lap. “Why aren’t you running?”

Pandora looks down, and a wave of silky dark hair falls across her face like a veil. “After a week of running and hiding, I realised I missed you. The way you smiled, your voice, your touch, your energy, and the chaos. Another week passed, and I realised I only have you while you have family and allies. And if I can’t have you, what else is there for me in this world that wants to hate me?”

“Pandora.”

She turns toward me and rests her hand on my lap. “I am falling for you, but I know I can’t have you, and it hurts. Everything fucking hurts. So…” She arches her chin and exposes her neck. “Kill me so I don’t have to hurt anymore.”

I smile, but there’s a tightness in my throat, making it difficult for me to breathe. Looking away from her, I open the pouch and reveal two small glass bottles with purple liquid inside them.

“I don’t know how to fall for someone and never understood it,” I say. “But I know every waking moment around you made me feel alive. Enough to know that I want you to live for the first time in my life, even if I’m not there to see it.”

I slide the bottle with the purple sticker into her hand. Then I take the other with the red sticker. Pandora furrows her brow as she twists it around her fingertips. “What is it?”

“Poison,” I say. “Strange, how I wanted my hands around your throat this entire time, but I come here with poison instead. It seems you have crawled under my skin, and as much as I want it to heal me, it’s not enough.”

“You won’t make me a knight?” she jokes.

I laugh. “Stop fucking with me, Pandora.”

She leans her forehead against my shoulder. Her touch electrifies me, even through the hunger of wanting her dead.

“Ice elemny,” she says with a sigh. “We really fucking are stubborn creatures.”

“You’re talking to a man who has urges to kill you, no matter how much time we spend together.”

Pandora sits upright and pops the lid off the bottle. “Will there be pain?”

“You will fall asleep and won’t wake up.”

“Together, then?” She laughs, and it’s light and filled with relief. “Isn’t there a poem…book, or something about two lovers dying in each other’s arms?”

I turn to her, pop the lid, and face her with the bottle pressed against my lips. “I doubt they were this relieved to die under such pathetic circumstances. But it wouldn’t surprise me if there were.”

She links her arm around mine and presses the drink to her lips. I stare at her brown eyes, and I have a thought of asking to see her eyes before death. But then I thought of everything I had put her through and realised I didn’t deserve to see all her beauty.

We count down, tipping the drink up. My eyes land on hers, and the purple liquid slips down her throat while the poison, pungent, burns through my lungs and chest.

“It’s not as bad as I thought,” Pandora admits. “What do we do now?”

My body feels on fire, as every cell inside me desperately yearns to burn away the poison, but I force it not to.

“Lie with me,” I say.

In a bed meant for one, we press against each other. My arms move around her in an embrace, and I tap my finger against her burns. She smiles at me, and it hurts a little knowing she’s willing to die beside me instead of fighting for her life, even if I’m not in it.

“Can you tell me about your scars now?” Her voice is soft. Afraid to go above a whisper.

My smile twitches. “Which ones?”

I shrug off my shirt, and as we lie together, her head pressed against my chest, her fingers trace across the scars. “This one!”

“Bar fight. Emmerton was sleeping with someone’s boyfriend. Women are more violent than men. She went crazy, using furniture and spinning it around the bar. Before I could snap her neck, the knife with a wooden handle grazed against me.”

“Wow. I’m surprised his dick hasn’t fallen off. Sara told me he has at least fucked over one hundred elemny.”

“I think he’s pushing two hundred.”

“Bleh…” Her fingers move to another scar. “What about this one?”