Page 110 of Infamous

I can’t breathe through it. Can’t think past the image of her split open on that table.

Blood in her hair.

Her hand slipping out of mine.

That look on the doctor’s face when he saidif.

I don’t believe inif.

I believe in cause and consequence.

In pain repaid in equal measure.

64

NADIA

The world slips sideways.

The light dissolves.

And I am floating.

Weightless.

Wordless.

Suspended in a silence that hums like the inside of a shell pressed to the ear.

For the first time in forever, there’s no pain.

No machines.

No pressure in my chest.

Justhim.

Lucian stands in the mist ahead, half-shadow, half-memory. His white shirt is open at the collar, stained with the same blood that stains my dreams. His eyes - those eyes that once looked at me like I was both the sin and the salvation - find me through the fog.

“Lucian,” I breathe, and the sound cracks, because saying his name feels like breaking a promise I already broke a thousand times.

He smiles - small, sad, devastating. “You weren’t supposed to come here, angel.”

My throat tightens. “Where is here?”

He glances around the endless nothing. The sky bleeds gray into silver, and the ground is mist that moves like water. “Between,” he says softly. “It’s the space between breaths. Between the living and the gone.”

“I’m dead?” My voice trembles, the words scattering like glass.

“Not yet.”

I take a step toward him, and the mist swirls around my feet. “Then why are you here?”

He looks away. The light flickers around him like he’s made of smoke. “Because you wanted me to be.”

My chest cracks open. I reach for him. “Then don’t leave me again. Please, Lucian. I can’t - ”

He closes the distance in two steps. His hands frame my face, calloused and warm, solid enough to make me believe he’s real. “You don’t belong here, Nadia.”