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My distance will save her, though. I refuse to let Autumn meet the same fate as the only other person I’ve ever cared about.

Logically, I’m being an idiot, but better safe than sorry. I don’t want to think about what I’ll do if I get too close, only to lose her. Still, I can’t stop thinking about her. The kindness she’s shown me, even when I didn’t deserve it. Her outright stubbornness and refusal to give up on others, even when she should, even when she’s drowning in her own shit.

The way her body moved when I touched her.

Fuck it. I’m about to turn back when I catch movement from the corner of my eye. At first, I don’t even care, but then the light shifts, and I see the streak of color.

I creep closer. Every muscle in my body is taut and sweat beads along my spine. The rotter drags one foot behind it and moans low in its throat. Its face is smeared with grime and blood, but I can still make out the faint curve of its jaw and the sharp line of its cheekbone.

A face I’d seen so many times. One that haunts my every waking moment. I move closer and the rotter turns toward me. I see the ink marked into its flesh.

My knees give out. I choke on a breath as I stumble backward. My chest squeezes tighter with every heartbeat. The world tilts, and I have to brace myself against a wall to keep from collapsing entirely.

No. Please, no.

The rotter lurches toward me with its teeth bared and arms outstretched. I snap out of the fog long enough to slam it back against an adjacent wall, where I pin its decaying body there with a long rod through the sternum, trapping it in place. Its arms flail and it reaches for me, but I keep it pinned. I can’t move. Can’t breathe.

Maybe it’s a mistake. Maybe I’m imagining things.

I pull my water bottle and my shirt from my backpocket and wet the fabric before wiping the dirt and grime from the rotter’s face, but that only confirms my worst fear.

The hair is matted with blood, and the normally bright eyes are milky and vacant.

The memory of Malcolm’s body flashes before me. I’m torn apart, alone, because I’d left him. I’d let him down.

The pattern repeats. The cycle of my failures continues, painted in blood and rot.

The wall inside me crumbles. For the first time in so long, I fall to my knees.

My hands shake. My breath tears out of me in ragged sobs I can’t hold back. My face crumples, and I press my forehead to the dirt, like I’m drowning or praying.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. My voice comes out shredded. “I’m so sorry.”

She must have come after me, but found trouble she couldn’t fight off. She never should have come after me. I never should have left.

My tears water the dirt. The sobs rack my body. Years of bottled grief pouring out all at once. “I should have been there. I should never have closed the door.”

There are so many things I should have done differently, but now it’s too late.

My chest feels like it’s caving in, like my ribs are crushing inward under the pressure of this failure. I can’t breathe past the concrete block lodged in my throat.

Everything hurts. My lungs burn, my eyes sting, and my heart feels like it’s being torn from my chest with rusty pliers.

I failed Malcolm, and the pattern continues.

Everyone I try to protect ends up dead.

I kneel there for a long time, listening to the rasping groan of the rotter in front of me. One I can’t kill.

Because it’s Autumn, and that’s all that’s left of her.

I don’t knowhow I make it back, but somehow I do.

The world blurs at the edges. Colors slash across my vision. Sounds knife straight through my skull. My hands shake. My heart feels like a raw wound that I can’t rip out, and not for a lack of trying. I can’t stop seeing her face twisted with rot, the purple in her hair dulled beneath dirt and blood when it should be alive and vibrant as she is…or was.

I’m barely holding it together when I stagger back into camp. The first person I see is Caspian. He’s leaning against a tree, staring off into the distance with that faraway look he gets. That guy was always a dreamer, but now I’m about to give him one hell of a nightmare. He’s going to be crushed. He was getting so close to her.

Lucky bastard. At least he wasn’t a dick and didn’t hold back like I did. At least he made better use of his time while she was still here. He’ll never have to experience the level of regret I’m living through right now.