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I tip my wrist again, letting the blood fall. “You can yell at me later. Just… stay. Please, stay.”

But her body stays limp in my arms. Her lips don’t part.

“No,” I whisper, pressing my forehead to hers. “No, no, no…”

Then a sigh.

Cold, clipped.

I look up just as Aria’s mother steps forward with a flick of her hand. The remaining enforcer obeys instantly, bringing her a clean blade. She doesn’t even glance at him. Instead, she kneels—so casually it’s almost unnerving.

“Stop flinching,” she mutters—to me, I think—as if I’m some child wincing at a scrape.

I watch, heart stuttering, as she slices her own palm open. Thick, black-red blood wells up and drips onto Aria’s wound.

I flinch anyway.

“Our blood can heal,” she says absently, disdain curling her lip. “If we so choose.”

And I realize what she’s doing.

Aria jerks suddenly in my arms—a small, startled gasp. Her fingers twitch. The wound in her side begins to close, slow but sure. The worst of the bleeding stops. Her skin, once too pale, begins to flush with warmth again.

“Aria,” I whisper, barely able to breathe. I cradle her tighter, pressing my cheek to hers. Her lashes flutter. Her hand clutches weakly at my shirt.

Relief hits me like a blow, stealing the breath from my lungs.

I don’t even notice her mother standing until she speaks again.

“Loyalty and love,” she muses, rising to her full height. “You mortals cling to it in such baffling ways.”

She turns her gaze on Aria—still dazed, still cradled in my arms—and something flickers there. Not softness. Not anything close to love. Butcuriosity. A crack in the porcelain mask.

Then she nods once to her lone guard. “We’re leaving. Take the wounded. Let them be.”

He obeys without question, passing the order to the others. No one so much as touches us.

As the enforcers melt into the shadows, the woman lingers one heartbeat longer. Her gaze flicks to me, something dark and unreadable in her eyes.

“You love her,” she says again, quieter this time. “Perhaps that’s worth watching.”

And then she’s gone.

I don’t move.

I don’tbreathe.

I just hold Aria, her blood still on my hands, my arms locked tight around her trembling frame. Her breath hits my collarbone—real and fragile andthere—and the sob I’ve been holding back shatters through me.

She’s alive.

For now, that’s enough.

Aria

A Few Days Later

Thefirecracklesbetweenus, painting Roan’s face in soft amber and shadow. We’re tucked beneath a canopy of stars in a clearing off the main road—no tents, no walls, just the open sky and the hush of wind through pine.