Page 272 of The Devil's Thorn

He tried to drag me back, but the ground beneath us tilted. Slid.

I felt the edge before I saw it. I saw his eyes widen. Then the gravel crumbled. My body dropped out from under me. His weight pulled me with him.

And then— we werefalling.

Air rushed past me. My scream vanished into the wind. The last thing I saw before the darkness swallowed me— Was Rafael’s body, lying still in a pool of red, just before he disappeared from view.

Everything was black. Heavy. Cold. Still. And then— A piercing burn shot through my lungs. My eyessnapped open. Water. Dark, freezing, all around me.

Choking my throat, filling my nose, dragging me under like it wanted to bury me alive. The pressure crushed against my ribs. My limbs thrashed instinctively, but they were sluggish. Numb.

Where—

The weight hit me all at once. I was underwater.Under the cliff.

The fall. The man. The shot. Rafael.

No. No no no no?—

My lungs screamed. I kicked hard, legs pumping, arms slicing through the water as I clawed upward, toward whatever sliver of light might exist above. But everything looked the same. The darkness bled into itself, endless and suffocating.

The man who’d dragged me down was nowhere. Maybe dead. Maybe gone.

My body ached, every movement slower than the last. My fingers reached— Nothing. No surface. No air. Just the cold. Just the weight.

Rafael is gone.

The thought sliced through the panic like a razor. And suddenly, none of it mattered.

The fight. The water. My life. Gone.

Because he was.

I saw him fall. I saw the blood. I saw the way his eyes locked on mine right before they went still.

He was the last thing I saw before the cliff swallowed me whole. And now there was just this. Water. Silence. And me.

I stopped kicking. My arms drifted to my sides. My eyes fluttered half-shut. I could feel it, the way it crept in—slow, quiet, merciful.

Maybe it was better this way. Maybe I wasn’t meant to survive any of this. Maybe the fire that started the night my parents died was always going to endhere—with the truth crashing over me like a tide I couldn’t outswim.

My chest spasmed once. Then again.

But I didn’t fight. Not anymore.

I let the dark take me. Let the cold wrap around my skin like a blanket. And the last thing I thought before everything slipped away… Was his name.

Rafael.