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Eight seconds. Thud-thud.

She kept running, pushing herself toward the Veil. Not once did she tear her eyes from the flickering curtain and the figures she could see waiting on the other side of it. Waiting for her.

Her family. The people who’d brought meaning to her life and had taught her what true love was.

Mortifer kept urging her forward, spurring her to move faster. She was already going as quickly as her legs could take her, her muscles threatening to give out. But it wasn’t fast enough.

She was about a dozen feet away from the Veil when the numbers on her neck ran out and dimmed.

—

Darien couldn’t take it. He couldn’t stand to watch helplessly from behind the Veil as Loren ran for her precious life toward it.

He used to believe he knew what it felt like to be trapped, but this gave the word a whole new meaning as he was forced to watch the woman he loved race against a clock that was winding down to her death. And he was fucking stuck here, unable to get to her, unable to cross over this wretched divide and help her, gods-damnit.

“Please.” The word was whispered on a shaky breath. Sweat ran down his temples, his back, his sides. There was a twist in his stomach, and a frantic beating in his chest that wouldn’t slow. “Please, sweetheart, please. Please, please, please. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going.” He paid no mind to the demons that crossed through the Veil, ended by his Devils and Angels, who shot them down before their claws could touch ground. There were already so many bodies, there was hardly anywhere in the area to stand. The ground was soaked with blood, the air thick with the metallic stench of it.

Darien kept watching Loren, never taking his eyes off her, not for a second. He could see the numbers displayed on her neck from here. The angle and his sharp eyesight made them impossible to miss, but he wished he couldn’t see them. The only thing his sight managed to accomplish tonight was feeding him a truth he couldn’t bear to swallow.

There wasn’t enough time. She didn’t have enough time—

Seven…

Six…

“Come on.” His hands curled into fists at his sides, his gun hanging from the strap on his shoulder as he focused on nothing but Loren. She ran and ran and ran, pushing her legs with all her might. She was close but still too far. He found his boots inching toward the Veil, barely a foot separating him from death. If she died, he would die too. Would follow her into the afterlife, and leave this world behind. “Come on.”

Five…

Four…

Three…

Two…

“Please,” Darien begged, the word a sob. There was a stinging in his eyes, and his vision filled with moisture. “Don’t take her from me, don’t take her from me. Don’t fucking take her from me. Please.”

One…

The timer stopped, the glowing numbers on Loren’s neck sinking into her skin, not a hint of blue light left behind.

Every thought in Darien’s head evaporated, and he felt his heart crack in two, a sharp split that nearly pushed him to his knees, an out-of-body sense of dread turning his head weightless, his limbs boneless. He stared…not blinking, the pieces of his shattered heart racing in his chest, his stomach a knot of nerves that made him want to throw up—

Loren was still running. Still breathing. Her heart was pounding out a rhythm that reached his ears from all the way over here. Even from this distance, he could hear it, as loud and clear as the sound of her feet striking the soil, and it was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard.

It was a miracle. It was a goddamn miracle.

That soil glowed every time her feet touched ground. Red, then orange, then yellow, then green—every color of the rainbow as she ran like hell for the curtain, Singer glowing white at her side, Mortifer clinging to her ankle. It took every bit of strength he had left not to fall to his knees at the sight of this…this blessing. This answered prayer.

And just like that, she was through.

She threw herself through the Veil with a sob, and Darien didn’t care how it was possible that she was still alive as he caught her mid-jump, rocking back on his heels as she launched her full weight at him.

“I’m alive,” she was saying, again and again, her face buried against his shoulder. She beat him to it; she was alive. “I love you, Darien. I love you, I love you, I love you.”

She was alive.

—