Page 70 of Evermore

“It wasn’t me.”

He pressed his hand harder against my side, trying to stanch the flow of blood, but it poured through his fingers. His face twisted with grief, with terror, and his voice—so low, so broken— was barely more than a whisper. “Please,” he begged, his lips brushing against my forehead as his tears fell, warm and wet against my skin. “Please don’t leave me. Not like this.”

His words were thick with despair, and my heart twisted painfully in my chest. I wanted to stay. I wanted to promise him I wouldn’t leave, to reach up and wipe the tears from his beautiful face, to tell him everything would be okay, but I couldn’t move. My body was a weight I could no longer control. The cold had claimed me. All I could do was look up at him as my vision blurred and his face grew dim.

“Please, please…” Thorne’s voice broke, shattering like fragile glass. His fingers trembled as he held me, as if the sheer force of his will could keep my soul tethered here, keep me alive a little longer. “Don’t you fucking die. That’s not how this was supposed to go. We need more time.”

His forehead pressed against mine. Shaking like the world was crumbling around him. He kissed my hair, my cheeks, my forehead. Each touch was frantic. His tears fell faster now, splashing hot onto my skin. I was so cold, I barely felt them anymore.

“I’ll fix this,” he sobbed. “I’ll fix you. Just… stay with me. Please, just stay.”

Only then did I understand I’d never known him at all. As the cold took everything, as my heart stuttered and stopped,as the snow covered us in a blanket of pristine white, my last thought was of that day on the road. How easily I’d believed a god could be something as simple as a soldier with kind eyes.

He held me, and he watched me die, and I finally understood he’d never been mine to love at all.

I came back to myself with Winter’s dying sob still echoing in my head. She stood beside Alastor now, her bloody dress dripping onto the stone floor.

“Do you understand now?” she asked. “Do you see what love means to a god?”

Drip. Drip.

“Drip. No. Don’t say that aloud. She’s not really here.”

“How fascinating,” Alastor mused, studying me. “Tell me, what did you see when the Remnants took you that time? Mine were unable to see beyond yours.”

“I see the truth.”

She sees truth, Winter repeated, though he couldn’t hear her.She sees what happens when anyone tries to love gods.

“I see you,” I told her, ignoring Alastor completely. “I see all of us. All the lives he’s taken. All the loves he’s betrayed.”

“The voices grow stronger,” Alastor noted. “Good. Let them in. Let them show us what you truly are.”

Winter’s laughter filled the room, high and broken.We are all the same story, told over and over until the words lose meaning. All pawns in his endless game. Killed by one brother or another’s hand as they play with lives. Nothing but a game.

I nodded, head hanging to the side. Maybe. Probably. “Nothing but a game.”

The Remnants stirred beneath my skin, responding to her words. A thousand voices in my head. A thousand scorned.

“You want to see what I truly am?” I asked, my voice barely recognizable to my own ears as I grinned. “You want to knowwhat happens when you break something enough times it stops trying to be whole?”

Winter smiled, her teeth stained red.Show him.

The Remnants exploded outward with a force that shattered the chair and snapped the ropes. They filled the room like a living storm, feeding off centuries of pain and rage and betrayal. Each shadow held a memory, each whisper carried a death. They were mine now.

“Nothing but a game,” I whispered.

Alastor stumbled back, his Remnants rising to meet mine. But they were nothing compared to the power of a thousand broken hearts, a thousand betrayed loves, a thousand deaths.

“Remarkable,” he breathed, watching as my shadows consumed his. “You’re not just channeling power, you’re channeling every life he’s taken. Every life he’s broken.”

Winter circled me as I rose from the shattered chair, her bloody footprints marking each step.Make him understand what it means to cage a monster.

The walls cracked as my power pressed against them. The air froze and shattered at the will of the Remnants. My mind splintered further, breaking apart under the weight of so many lives, so many deaths, so many betrayals. “Nothing but a game.” But it didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered but the rage and the pain and the desperate need to make someone, anyone, understand what it felt like to be unmade over and over and over again.

“Nothing but a game. Nothing left but shadows and screams.”

Winter’s laugh mingled with mine as darkness consumed everything.