Page 58 of The Last One Standing (Rogue X Ara #4)

ARA

H e led me to a cave of heated pools that he had stumbled upon a month prior.

It looked eerily similar to those atop the Silver Hollow. Of course, the location remained in my head, but not the how or why or who I’d been with. I couldn’t have gotten up there by myself. The Silver Hollow sat atop a plateau, which meant Rogue must’ve flown us.

It seemed most memories were that way. Only the pieces that directly involved Rogue were ripped away—all the context that made sense.

The cave itself could’ve been the inside of a massive geode, cracked open by the greedy Fae who found and left it for rainwater to fill, the pools pale blue and steaming. The ground and walls sparkled with quartz, shimmering like frost.

The air was thick with humidity, the water as warm as a bath, yet ice needled my skin.

“Ara?” Rogue asked, but his voice was drowned out by the infernal drip…drip…drip…

A constant drip echoed from somewhere in the cave, a distinct sound that burrowed into my skull above all others.

The water caressed my waist, not a ripple in its surface. It stood as still as my frozen form, creating a Goddess-forsaken mirror.

I stared at Adonis’s creation—or rather, his destruction. I stared into my own eyes, dull and tired. My fingertips slid beneath them as if I’d feel the dark circles there, but all I felt was bone.

I escaped over a week ago—or was it two? The days all blurred together.

My cheekbones were still so sharp, my eyes hollow, and there weren’t any freckles left. I used to have a faint dusting across my nose and cheeks that matched my mother’s, but without the sun, they’d disappeared with the rest of me, leaving my skin a sickly pale blank canvas.

My long yet brittle hair clung to my form, as did the thin blouse I’d left on, revealing every inch of my body: a gangling mess of ribs and collarbones and sharp shoulders. My breasts were smaller, what little curve I had rendered nonexistent.

I wrapped my fingers around my bicep, and a choked sound climbed my throat when my fingers almost touched. Looking down, I tightened my hold and wiggled my fingers. If my nails were longer, they’d snag each other.

I’d had some kind of shape before, because the lack of it now made it glaringly obvious. I looked as though I’d crawled back from the brink of death—but I had, hadn’t I?

Drip.

Drip. Drip.

I’d been forced to the brink of death by the hands of a man who’d never feared it himself, who’d never toed the line between life and death. Suddenly, the ease with which he nearly killed me over and over didn’t seem so jarring. His fascination with death and making others toe that line made sense.

He’d never felt the terror of death looming on the horizon. How could he?

He couldn’t be killed.

Water sloshed behind me, but I didn’t look away, not even when waves broke my reflection.

Normally, my lungs would try to put me out of my misery by smothering me when no one else would. This time, though, they breathed normally, numbly. My heart beat as it always did. My legs stood unwavering. The realm went on.

Yet I’d been knocked off kilter, the world skewed through unseeing eyes.

I rubbed my wrist and mourned the loss of my scar tissue. Scowling, I dug my nails into my skin, clenching my jaw at the sting.

Drip.

Drip. Drip.

Strong arms wrapped around either side of me and pulled my nails from my wrist. Blood dripped into the water and swirled into red clouds before they, too, disappeared.

“Don’t,” he warned, albeit gently.

His touch moved down my forearms to the backs of my hands until his fingers slid between mine. He crossed my arms over my breasts and pulled me into him, my back hitting his chest—his warm, bare chest.

Five red crescents marked my wrist over the silver lightning.

Heart pounding, I turned in his grasp, eyed the six-pointed sun carved into his skin, then met his gaze. His brows furrowed, head tilted.

Time slowed, and he was helpless, moving through molasses.

I lifted my arm and aimed my wrist at the sun on his chest, the center of his blood oath.

Were there words I was supposed to say? A spell or a chant? A verbal oath?

The thousands of people in his camp couldn’t have each individually sworn the oath, but their generals must have.

Canyon’s oath was bound with a phrase, but the words were lost in a hazy memory, and trying to recall that day stabbed daggers in my temples.

Sparks crackled around me, energy vibrating my bones. The world swayed, and I blinked the dizziness away.

Fuck.

Intention would have to do. On the verge of vomiting or fainting, my heart in my throat, I whispered, “Safe from me.”

Safe from me.

Safe from my mind.

Just…safe.

Safe, here, and alive .

“Safe, here, and alive.”

I blew on my wrist and begged the Goddess herself that the ritual was the same, that this would be enough, that my simple phrases would work.

The magic seemingly heard me. It turned my blood to dust, and it drifted to its intended target, just like it had in Canyon. The sun glowed a burning red, Rogue’s face contorting with pain or anger—or both—as my blood sizzled away, his muscles straining, the tendons in his neck bulging.

Within seconds, my oath sank into his skin.

A sense of finality washed over me as the sun faded to black ink, and time resumed, my strength waning. I staggered away from him on numb legs as he doubled over, his chest heaving, head hanging low.

Every passing second stoked the charge in the air.

Restless energy swelled in my chest, as though I were the spark about to catch flame.

He had to understand why. He had to have seen it coming.

Drip. Drip.

Then again, maybe he hadn’t expected me to do such a thing without my memories. Maybe he didn’t think he meant that much to me, yet.

He was wrong.

When his eyes finally lifted to mine, my heart skipped a beat.

His irises held smoldering embers. “What have you done?”

“What needed to be done,” I said with another step away. “I had to protect you, even from myself.”

I swallowed the rising knot in my throat.

And the air?—

The water stayed warm, heated from the fire flowing in the earth below, but the air chilled. His heat seeped out bit by devastating bit.

“And who will protect you?” he asked. “When Adonis’s words in your head come to fruition, who will protect you ?”

I hadn’t realized my feet kept moving until my back hit the cold stone wall, and I gasped. He’d matched my steps, maintaining the distance between us but not allowing an inch more. The water reached my collarbones, but the air had become so cold, my breaths were clouds of white.

“I would’ve stopped any attempt you made against my life, Ara.

You would not have killed me, but now…if you even move to make an attempt, intentional or not…

” He shook his head, running his fingers through his hair.

“Fuck.” His hand left his hair damp and disheveled as his gaze raked over my form, noting every rise and fall of my chest. “What have you done?”

“Saved your life.”

Heartbreak— that was what stared back at me, heartbreak masked with anger. He thought he was going to lose me.

Would he?

I bit my bottom lip, refusing to consider the answer. If it were him or me, then I would choose him. I chose not to be Rogue’s executioner or Adonis’s puppet.

“Do you understand what will happen to me if you die?” He moved closer, the heat radiating off him palpable. “Do you know what will happen to the realm if you die?”

He braced his hands over my head, and I craned my neck to look up at him. He lowered his mouth to my throat.

“I’ll tear it apart,” he whispered, brushing his lips over the mate mark.

Oh, Goddess . “I’ll tear it apart, myself included, and burn it all to the ground.

Ashes will be your only memorial before I follow you into the void.

” His teeth grazed the mark this time, earning a string of silent curses—half curses, half pleas.

He pulled back just far enough to meet my gaze. “If you die, so does the realm.”

Then his mouth crashed to mine, desperate and hungry. His hand cupped my cheek as he pressed me into the wall, devouring me whole as if it might be the last time he ever could—but I was starved, too. I melted into him, my hands tangling in his hair, my back arched and chest pressed to his.

I moaned into his mouth, and he answered with a groan, his knee finding its way between mine, nudging them farther apart.

His Goddess-forsaken words circled in my head, though.

So does the realm.

Against every instinct, I tried to break the kiss, but he didn’t allow me a breath.

I tapped on his chest, then shoved, mumbling into his mouth.

It wasn’t until I sank my teeth into his lip that he staggered back a step, breaths ragged, wiping his thumb across the broken skin, smearing the droplet of blood.

“You cannot crumble beneath the weight of my death,” I said, breathless.

“If I die to spare you, then you have to live. If not for me, then for your people. They need you, Rogue. You are their king. ” My last words hung in the silence between us, broken only by the lapping water, our heavy breathing, and the infernal dripping. “It was my choice to?—”

“You truly have no memory of me left.”

It wasn’t a question, but a truth, a realization. I’d told him as much, shown him over and over, but this time, the confirmation seemed to hit him harder than before.

He rubbed his knuckles over his sternum, staring as if seeing me for the first time, and my skin crawled, my muscles itching to move.

Heat seeped into my cheeks, an apology on the tip of my tongue, but I wasn’t sorry for swearing the oath.

My only regret was how hurt he looked, his pain burrowing into my chest like it were my own.

He flattened his hand over his oath mark and dropped his eyes to it with furrowed brows.