Page 57 of Claimed In Darkness

57

NAIRA

T his is it. I can feel it.

The end.

The last flickering ember of warmth in my veins, slipping through my hand like fine sand.

Zephiran is holding me together, but it’s too late.

He knows it. I know it.

But he still won’t let me go.

His grip is too tight, almost painful. He’s trying to hold me here.

Trying to keep me from slipping away.

Trying to stop something that can’t be stopped.

"Stay with me," he growls.

His voice is raw, wrecked.

A man unraveling.

He’s a man losing everything.

"Please."

I should fight.

I don’t want my last breath to be spent lying to him.

Right this moment, I realize, I don’t want to leave him.

The warmth pooling beneath me isn’t warmth at all.

It’s my blood. It’s my body giving up.

It’s the cost of every mistake I’ve made, every war I’ve fought, every moment I thought I could outrun this end.

"You stupid, stubborn woman," Zephiran snarls, pressing a shaking hand to my wound, trying to stop what he can’t fucking stop.

"Why did you run? Why didn’t you fucking stay?"

I choke on a weak laugh.

That’s the real tragedy, isn’t it?

I spent so long trying to run from him and to escape the chains he wrapped around my soul.

Perhaps, deep down, I’m trying to prove I could be something without him.

But here I am, dying in his arms with the realization that I was never running from him.

I was always running toward him.

I blink up at him, the edges of my vision going soft, dark.

His face is all I can see.

His fury. His grief.

He is not a man who knows how to lose, not without taking the whole world down with him.

That’s why I have to stop him.

"Don’t do this," I whisper.

His jaw locks.

"Do what?"

I swallow hard.

Everything.

I know exactly what he’s going to do.

I know exactly who he will become if I die here and I can’t let that happen.

I touch his face and he flinches like it hurts.

"Let me go."

He bares his teeth.

"Never."

"Zephiran—"

"No."

It’s not a word.

It’s a fucking declaration.

A vow.

He is not letting me go even if it destroys him.

Even if it means doing something neither of us will come back from.

I exhale slowly.

I have nothing left.

No way to tell him what he means to me.

So I do the only thing I can.

I kiss him.

One last time.

One last breath.

One last moment before the dark takes me.

I feel it.

The pull.

The cold.

The end.

And as I fade and the world tilts and blurs?—

As my body stops?—

I hear him scream my name.

Then there is nothing.