Page 49 of Never Lost (The Unchained #3)

I gritted my teeth, using every ounce of my remaining strength to heave the rock aside.

It budged, revealing another narrow crevice.

The groaning sound of the earth intensified as we widened the opening just enough for us to pass through.

The air grew thinner, the passage steeper.

His coughs and moans of pain filled the darkness, each one driving a stake through my heart. And then all at once, he stopped.

“I—”

I cut him off, reaching back to grip his wrist tightly. “Shut up. Yup, now it’s my turn. Move , dammit.”

With Herculean effort, we edged our way through the crevice, clothes snagging, skin scraping so deep I could swear it was bone on bone.

Behind me, he tried to speak but could only cough again, a rasp that tore at my heart.

“Can you see it?” But the echo of my voice, bouncing off the passage’s walls, was the only answer.

“I…” My head whipped around just as a heavy thump reverberated through the narrow tunnel as he collapsed onto his knees, his head dropping forward.

I screamed, scrambling back toward him.

“Go, Lou. Go,” he forced out. “Do not fucking die here.”

“But it’s here ,” I sobbed. “It’s here. It’s right here. See?”

Screaming as I pushed my body beyond all human endurance, I shoved back what I thought was the last stone.

Only to reveal more stone. Cold, dead stone.

I collapsed. Gasping, I turned around, hoping to see any trace of hope left in his eyes.

But his eyes were turned away, unable to focus on me. He was clinging to consciousness by a thread only. “Lou,” he rasped. “I’m… I’m so sorry…”

“Don’t,” I choked out. “Don’t you dare apologize.”

I turned to him, vision blurring as I cupped his face between my hands, marred beyond comprehension as it was.

The eyes were the same, though. Even in darkness were his eyes that had once been light, light to astound and baffle and transform me, even as they wore amber-gold rings of sorrow. Eyes that deserved so much more than this .

“Freedom.” He choked out the word. “What’s that, anyway?”

Ordinarily, I might have laughed at his casual brushing off of one of the fundamental pillars of being human. But now I could only choke and weakly suck more poison into my lungs.

“I already almost died a dozen times this week,” he said. “And if—if the only reason I survived any of that is just so I could die here with you—then I’m glad—I’m glad I survived.”

“What’s your name?” I asked him, gently brushing my bloody fingertips over the place where his hair should be.

“What?”

“Your name. Please. I’ve never once asked, ever. It’s not for me to ask. But I want to call you by it. I want to know you. Just once, before—Tell me.”

His eyelashes fluttered weakly before his eyelids came to rest. I didn’t expect them to reopen.

“What—what do you want it to be?”

“You—you can’t be serious.”

“I am.” He gasped. “You—you made me a person, Lou.”

“You were always a person.”

“You know what I mean. Just?—”

“I couldn’t. You?—”

But of course I knew. I’d known the moment it came to me, long ago, when I lay in his arms, trembling and ecstatic, a billion years before now.

When he’d first given me an orgasm in that stupid, frilly pink princess bed that symbolized everything that didn’t fucking matter—and somehow, everything that did.

And he knew I knew. He’d known it all along.

“Whisper it.”

He was so close, yet I could barely hear him now.

“Whisper it, and—and maybe?—”

“Yeah?” A tear slid down my cheek. Then another. The fact that I could still cry at all was a miracle in itself, but the idea that I’d ever not cry for him was more preposterous still.

“Yeah.”

Like many times before, I curled my body in the empty space beside his.

Silly girl, I’d once dared to hope I’d have all the time in the world to do this.

That we’d be able to drink each other in, in silence, in peace.

But if this was the only peace we would ever know—well. I could forge us an altar of stone.

And as softly as anyone could, my lips brushed his ear, and I released the name into it.

As for that name? I’d never planned on telling him.

But I’d never planned on a lot of things.

He didn’t respond. His eyes had closed, his chest rising and falling more shallowly with every breath. I counted the seconds, wondering on which one it would stop.

Time.

But like freedom, what was time?

I closed my eyes and joined our hands, though he couldn’t entwine or squeeze anymore. But it didn’t matter. I had strength enough.

So far, all of his worst moments he’d suffered alone. And even though I couldn’t change anything else, now I could change that.

So I whispered it again—over and over, a thousand times—though I couldn’t even be sure what he really heard, or really felt, in the seconds before his hand went limp and fell away.

And after that, I couldn’t even whisper anymore.

Only breathe.

In breath, my existence coalesced. No other sound, no other sensation. Darkness. Silence.

Breath. In and?—

Wait a minute. What was I breathing, anyway?

And just like that, each lost sensation returned. The grit under my back. The burning in my lungs. The distant wail of—yes—sirens.

And light . Not a bulb. Light.

I opened my eyes. I could barely see, the haze still swallowing even the faintest outlines of our surroundings.

With a weak burst of energy, I scrambled toward the light, which filtered in through a pinprick gap in the stone. To my astonishment, a light tap was all it took to topple it away, a weak wave all it took to get attention.

Then I turned.

His hand still lay next to mine, limp and lifeless.

I brushed my fingers against his face. His skin was cool.

Blind, numb, I could only think to shake him and say it again: the name he’d asked me to choose. And then again. First a whisper, then louder, a raw, keening incantation. As if that would make any goddamn difference in the face of?—

But he’d said . He’d said . Maybe?—

The crunch of boots on rocks yanked me back into an even sharper reality, loud and painful. Voices shouted orders I couldn’t understand. I just clutched him tighter until other hands descended, pulling me away, hoisting my arms, prying up my fingers.

“Check the boy.”

I understood that .

One of two female EMTs, brown hair pulled back in a stiff bun, brushed aside a layer of filth off him and bent down, examining him.

“He’s still breathing. Get?—”

Suddenly, she stopped, and her expression turned hard. She glanced up at her colleague, who followed her gaze back down. To the number burned into his arm.