Page 139
Pathetic.
I do not care.
“Please. He is young. He came back to the f-forest when grief broke him,” I sob, my voice and speech getting stronger as grief takes me. “He learned your paths. He listened when the wrong light called and… did not follow. He healed me with what you s-showed him. He loves this land, even when it hurts him. He loves… me.”
My voice fails on that last word as the truth of it fills the circle anyway.
Lucas loves me.
He said it with blood in his teeth and the Varkhyn’s shadow still in the air, trying to send an apology through the bond while preparing to die alone. He had thought of me first. Even then. Even after I left him cold for a month. Even after I crowded him with fear until he told me to let him breathe. Even after the world gave him every reason to regret the bond.
I bend over him, rocking once without meaning to.
“Take me,” I beg. “Take my lantern. Take my antlers. Take… the s-shape you made. Take the guardian and leave the man he chose. Let him wake. Let him hate me for the bargain if he must. Let him live angry. Let him live without me. Let him live.”
The stone beneath us warms, and Lucas’s fingers twitch against my arm. I freeze, watching as his lashes flutter.
“Lucas,” I breathe, and the name comes out almost clear because terror makes miracles from ruined throats. “Lucas. Open your eyes. Please.”
He looks at me then; his beautiful moss-colored eyes are unfocused and glassy with pain, but open.
He sees the skull first, I think. The true face bent over him, blood and rain and cracked bone, antlers spread above us like black branches against the pale hollow light. Then he sees me under it, or through it, or in the only way Lucas has ever seen me since the first true seeing. Not as a monster, as a story, or as a warning. As Onyx.
His mouth curves faintly, and he smiles.
The sound that leaves me is not a roar. It is worse. A broken, sobbing thing I did not know this body could make. I press my forehead to his, careful of the skull, shaking so hard the lantern chain rattles against my antler.
“Stay,” I say. “Stay, Lucas. Stay.”
His hand moves slowly, dragging through blood and torn fabric until he finds my wrist. He cannot grip hard. His fingers only rest there, warm still, living still, and I bend lower as if that small touch could command me.
“Onyx,” he whispers.
My name in his mouth is the first sunrise.
“I am here,” I say, the words rough, uneven, forced through a throat that wants to be silent and a heart that refuses. “Here. Here. Keep eyes open.”
He blinks slowly, and I feel the effort of it through the bond. “You’re talkin’,” he murmurs, each word thin enough to break.
“Yes. For you. Please keep eyes open.”
A tiny breath that might be a laugh leaves him, then becomes a wince. “Bossy.”
“Yes,” I say immediately, because I will be anything if it makes him stay. “Bossy. Menace. Ancient asshole. K-keep eyes open and insult me.”
His smile weakens, but it stays. The bond flickers warmer for one impossible heartbeat.
Then his eyes drift.
“No,” I say, panic cracking the word. I touch his face with shaking claws drawn back as far as they will go. “No sleep. Look at me. Look—Lucas.”
He forces his gaze back. There are tears in his eyes now, and I think they hurt him. Everything hurts him. Breathing hurts, staying hurts, dying hurts. I can feel the thread pulling thinner and thinner, and all my strength means nothing against it.
“I’m tired,” he whispers.
“No.”
“Wildheart…”
