Page 121 of Infamous

“You think the universe is neat? You think it gives us perfect?” he murmurs. “It doesn’t. It gives us chances. Odds. We’ll take the five percent.”

The words catch in my throat. “Five?”

He smiles, small and sad. “That’s what the doctor said, right? That there’s still a chance. Not big. Not a safe bet. Just… possible.”

I let out a broken laugh that tastes like tears. “You’d bet on five percent?”

“I’d bet onyou.”

The room tilts. The sunlight softens. The wind carries the sound of something living outside - the bird again, singing like it knows no better.

He pulls the blanket higher over my knees, his hand lingering, thumb tracing slow circles into the fabric. “You don’t have to be okay today,” he whispers. “You just have to keep going. I’ll do the rest.”

I look at him - this man who’s both sin and salvation, whose love is an ache that makes living feel possible again. “You really think I can come back from this?”

He presses a kiss to my knuckles. “You already have.”

For the first time in weeks, the silence doesn’t feel suffocating. It feels like the space right before dawn - the kind of stillness that promises light, even if it hasn’t arrived yet.

I turn back to the window. The hills roll on forever, gold and alive. His hand stays wrapped around mine, firm and steady.

And for one fragile moment, I believe him.

Maybe we’ll take the five percent.

Maybe that’s enough.

70

NADIA

Time. It’s both cruel and kind.

It stretches and snaps, mends and ruins - a quiet architect of everything we become. At first, it breaks you clean, sharp as glass. It takes what you love and grinds it down until you forget what whole ever felt like. You curse it for moving forward when you can’t.

But then, without permission, it starts to heal you.

Slowly. Ruthlessly.

Days blur into weeks, and somewhere in the blur, the pain dulls. The memories stop clawing at you. You begin to see things for what they were, not what you needed them to be. The wounds don’t close neatly - they leave ridges, reminders - but you somehow stop bleeding.

Time doesn’t erase. It refines. It forces reflection. It strips you bare, then rebuilds you in pieces, steadier than before. And when you finally stand again, you see the world differently - clearer, quieter, as if all that breaking was just the world making room for the person you were meant to become.

Time. It’s all I have in here, and it’s the one thing that’s finally given me the tools to see clearly. To grow sharper.Quieter. Wiser. And with that clarity comes the truth I’ve been circling for years.

Part of me always knew. Something deep and instinctive kept the shape of it alive while the rest of me looked away - who he was, what he could be. My conscience wrapped itself around the truth like a heavy coat, stubborn and useless against the inevitable.

Only now, when everything is raw and exposed, that buried knowing unfurls. It’s not the man sitting across from me I’m seeing. It’s the man beneath the skin. The one made of the same cuts and rage and bone that built me.

Faces flicker at the edges of my vision - Lucian, then Jude, then Lucian again - until the lines dissolve. Their features slide into one another like images on a broken projector. The differences peel away, and what’s left is a single shape beating under two names: the same danger, the same gravity, the same terrible pull.

It lands like a stone in my chest and settles cold and steady.

Jude.

The man who found me bleeding and lost. The one who stayed when no one else would. The one who loved me like a sin he was proud to bear.

Lucian Cross. Jude Mercer. The same person.