Page 51 of The Last One Standing (Rogue X Ara #4)

I wished more than anything that I could pull it from her chest so Iaso could pack the wound with healing salve and offer Mother a reprieve, an easy breath, mercy.

She deserved mercy, but grief was not so generous.

I would never be able to comprehend how she hadn’t died from that wound, how she lived with that wound, but there was one thing I did know for absolute certainty.

Elora Wrynwood was one of the strongest people I’d ever met, and Adonis was responsible for her pain. He was the root cause of everything.

He’d been there when Vaelor was killed.

He’d known Vaelor, yet led Adrastus there, anyway. I saw the conflicting emotion in him all those weeks ago when he took the damned collar off and did something to my head.

He took my memories of Rogue, but why? If his goal was to inflict the most pain possible on his brother, why would he not just kill me?

He left me alive for a reason.

He needed me for something. He still needed me, and that sinking feeling in my gut told me it had something to do with the blade I’d pressed to Rogue’s throat.

If that were the case, his ire was directed at me, not his brother. If I killed him, I would be the one to live with a matching wound to my mother’s.

Adonis was a plague on the land, spanning decades.

He was responsible for Vaelor’s death.

For the anguish my mother had to live with.

For Alden having to live through the loss of his son, for his death.

For Evander’s death, too, the father I knew before his mind was destroyed, leaving him a husk of who he once was.

Adonis was an epidemic, not caring who he infected, as long as his reach spread far and wide, inflicting the most damage possible—and he had. He’d managed to tear apart my entire family, and for what? Revenge? A crown?

My fists clenched so tightly, they trembled at my sides.

No, I’d spent months with him. It wasn’t power he wanted—or rather, not just power.

The ground vanished from beneath me, and I free fell, my stomach climbing up my throat as I tumbled end over end.

I screamed, the ear-splitting sound still ringing in my ears when my eyes popped open to darkness.

Cold…empty…darkness.

My feet had long since gone numb, no longer fighting the pins and needles they once did. The pain in my legs was bone deep, the gnawing in my gut breath-stealing, but the worst part, the part that made anguish bury in my chest and fill my lungs with a silent sob, was the icy sting in my wrists.

The stone pressed into my back.

The chains rattled as a cry wracked my body and pulled at my shackles.

A low chuckle cut through the fog, and every ounce of anger seeped out through the soles of my bare feet.

Let me be wrong just once.

Please.

“Please,” I whispered, though it came out broken. “Please.”

I was never that lucky.

Adonis stood over me, clicking his tongue, shaking his head. “Poor, little mutt.”

What remained of my soul crumbled. Everything in my head scrambled and confused, a scattered puzzle with missing pieces, replaced by the mismatched ones he’d forced in.

My mind had fractured into pieces that no longer fit together, and I could see my cracked reflection in his cold eyes.

The past few weeks… It wasn’t real.

The escape, the rescue, food, wyverns, sleep, warmth, Livvy, Rogue Draki, the stars.

Rogue said he knew we were real, because the stars were real—but they weren’t, were they? None of it was real.

Why?

Why do this to me? Why that man?

I hadn’t realized I asked the questions aloud until he answered them, the sick humor in his voice gone.

“You’ll see why when the time is right.” The backs of his fingers touched my cheek, and I flinched away, sinking into the stone as much as possible, but not far enough. Never far enough. “Not much longer, I promise.”

If none of this was real, I never met Rogue Draki. He never forced me to his side.

He was never kind to me.

He never touched me.

He never loved me.

We never…

Rogue Draki was a stranger.

My eyes snapped open wide at the sharp stab in my heart. The pain was visceral, deafening, but there was no weapon lodged there.

I yanked at the chains, refusing to mourn the loss of a man I had never known. He didn’t mourn me. He didn’t know me.

A shaky breath crawled up my throat, and I ripped my arms again. The shackles tore at my scarred skin, slicing like dull, rusted blades, but physical pain was easier.

I couldn’t do this anymore. I couldn’t suffer one more vision, one more trick, one more minute.

Blood trickled down my arms, but it wasn’t enough. With a roar of frustration, I jerked harder, and hot liquid poured.

At least it was warm.

Metal hit bone, and the agony faded some, replaced by numbness. My heart raced in my chest, but my head drifted through clouds, my eyes fluttering closed.

I’d been so tired for so long, it felt nice to rest.

Maybe I’d finally put an end to my misery.

The hint of freedom, as faint and bleak as it was, brought one last wave of energy—of hope.

I opened my eyes to see Adonis standing several feet away, as pale as a ghost and…crying.

He was younger, not so hardened or bitter yet. His face turned upwards, tears pouring down his ruddy cheeks, eyes swollen and hair greasy, disheveled.

“I’ll make it right, I swear,” he sobbed. “I’ll fix it somehow, someway. Whatever it takes. I-I’ll fix it, and the world will be right again, and we’ll go back to the way things were.”

“Just let me die,” I whispered. “Let me die and be done with it.”

He scrambled forward on his hands and knees to the stacks of books scattered over the floor. He opened one, scanned the page, and unrolled a large piece of parchment. His eyes flashed between it and something on the floor.

“I found it,” he muttered, then released a crazed laugh and jerked to his feet. “Do you hear that?” he screamed. “I found it! I can do this, and I will. Do you hear me? I will!”

I blinked, and he returned to the Adonis I knew and hated. He stood several feet away, blanched and still—a marble statue, cut from the same stone as Rogue, or the Rogue I knew, the one he created in my mind. Two brothers, so similar yet so different, it felt like an insult to compare them.

He clenched his fists, jaw tight, gaze unfocused. Another slow blink, and he faded into the shadows, but his words remained. “We can’t be done, Ara. Not yet. Our fates have been entwined for far too long for it to end now…but we’re close. So close.”

“To what?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure if it was aloud or simply in my head. “What will be left in the end? You and…who? You’ll be as alone in your misery then as you are now. Miserable and utterly…alone.”

The steady sound of his footsteps faltered, and my lips twitched with a smile, a tired laugh bubbling in my chest.

He heard me.

“You may not have delivered the killing blow,” I said, then sucked in a ragged breath, “but Vaelor’s blood stains your hands, and I see it.”

Then, I drifted through a still, black sea. No tide, shore, or anchor as I sank lower into the abyss. Despite drifting to the bottom, my back hit the seafloor like someone had kicked me from the tallest tower, and I slammed into stone.

I jerked awake, sitting straight up, and gasped like the air had been knocked from my lungs. I rubbed my wrists, expecting them to be raw and bloody, but there was nothing. Not even a scar.

“It was just another nightmare,” I whispered to myself, despite the lingering images. My hand covered my trembling lips, eyes wide and unseeing.

It was dark here too—middle of the night, world asleep, everything frozen and numb and silent.

Tears pooled and blurred my surroundings to smudges of black and white. All I could make out was a white ground and the moon overhead.

“Did I die?” I mumbled against my palm to no one in particular. “Is this the afterlife?”

Perhaps I spoke to the moon. She always watched and listened, but then again, she always watched and listened. Nothing else. The sky in its entirety watched and listened, an accomplice to the tragedy in the world, unable or unwilling to stop any of it.

“I’m too tired.” Such a gross understatement, it shattered the floodgates. I was exhausted, bone tired after the last three months, and last night?—

A scream shredded my throat.

If Adonis were a regular Fae, he’d be dead right now.

We were never so lucky.

Warm arms wrapped around me, and I sank back into him without tearing my eyes from the black expanse above, even as tears soaked my cheeks.

“I’m too tired to keep doing this.” Angry sobs wracked my body, and I twisted in his hold to bury my face in his chest, my words turned unintelligible, my hands fisted in his shirt. “I’ll never be free.”

My nightmares were proof of that. I’d had this one more times than I cared to admit, or variations of it, but the bones were always the same: that this reality was the dream, a hallucination created at Adonis’s hands.

In my nightmares, I always woke to his face, still chained, still freezing, still captured.

I was still waiting for the other shoe to drop, and as long as he lived, I’d always be waiting.

But he was immortal, or damned near close to it.

Rogue whispered calm words, rubbing my back with his warm hands. His entire body warmed.

None of it helped. None of it mattered.

Nothing mattered because Adonis would live forever, and I’d live the rest of my days waiting.

Waiting and running.

Haunted by nightmares.

Suffocating.

Always suffocating.

I tried to push away from Rogue’s chest, but he didn’t let go, and suddenly, his touch became a little too tight, a little too cold. I vaguely heard him murmuring more words, more worried questions, pleading, but it all fell on deaf ears.

His hands turned icy despite his heated skin, and my mind blanked, frantic to escape the chains that held me still.

I gasped and shoved. “L-let me go. Can’t breathe.” Blood roared in my ears, and I whispered, “D-don’t touch me.”