Page 72 of The Last One Standing (Rogue X Ara #4)

“I—” I snapped up, hissing when hot liquid splashed onto my hand. I am awake , I almost said, but again, there was no one there.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

I’m awake, and I’m going mad, apparently.

“Yes,” I grumbled, moving my mug to my other hand, so I could wipe the burning liquid on the blanket. “Are there others outside? I keep hearing people talking.”

“Of course, there are people outside. Over a thousand, to be precise.” He laughed with a shake of his head. “You’re in a war camp. There are always people outside.”

My stomach sank, cheeks burning, and I averted my gaze to our beds. Mine remained untouched, but my parents’ was made too—made, but slept in. The fire pit still smoldered. They’d come and gone without me realizing.

He followed my line of sight and asked again, “Why are you sleeping in the chair?”

“I must’ve fallen asleep reading.” When, though? I didn’t remember coming back last night.

“And what book would that be? Must’ve been fairly boring.”

“Wake up.”

My heart skipped a beat, but I ignored it this time. If he didn’t hear it, then it came from my own head, and I didn’t want to let on that I was now hearing voices.

“Wake up.” It was closer.

My hands trembled around the mug, and I brought it to my lips, reveling in the burn as I gulped it down.

“Wake up, wake up, wake up.”

My heart pounded, the coffee vibrating from my shakiness, my muscles taut as a bowstring. At least I’d drunk enough now that it wouldn’t spill and go to waste.

“Ara?” My eyes snapped to my friend, and he quirked a brow. “What book?”

I took another sip and licked my lips, feeling around the chair. Sure enough, tucked in the corner and hidden beneath the thick blanket, was a book. I paused before pulling it out and flipping it over to look at the cover.

“ The Blood and the Broken, ” I read aloud, more confused than ever. I did not read this last night. I’d never even seen this book a day in my life.

He raised his brows, his mouth curving in a smile that I didn’t like. “Not all legends die in the end. Some bide their time until they can awaken again.”

I shook my head. I didn’t know what that meant or where this book had come from. I handed it to him and shrank back in the chair, cupping the mug with both hands. “It’s not mine.”

“Says the girl who fell asleep reading it,” he said, flipping the book over for me to read.

The words he’d recited were embossed in gold letters on the back cover, just below the two daggers pressed in silver.

He pulled his pretty knife from the sheath and held it up alongside the book as if to make a point. The red stone caught the sunlight just the way I liked, illuminating the dark liquid that swirled within, but my stomach hurt, and my head felt too fuzzy to understand what he wanted me to.

“I don’t know.” I shrugged, pulling my lips between my teeth.

“I know, little mutt.” He sheathed his weapon and clicked his tongue, patting my leg. “But you will.”

I pulled my knees up to my chest, dropping my gaze to my coffee. It gently sloshed side to side and looked a little different than it normally did.

“One day, you’ll understand everything, and you’ll thank me for it.”

When a stray beam of sunlight washed over us, a sheen reflected off the coffee’s surface. My wide eyes lifted to him, but he merely smiled and took another long gulp from his mug, so I did too, even though I really didn’t want to. Tears stung my eyes.

When I finished, my stomach twisted. I shifted in my seat, bile threatening to climb my throat.

“It’ll pass,” he murmured. “Don’t worry.”

The mug fell from my hands, tumbling from the chair, but his hand shot out to catch it.

“What?” I asked, grimacing. A headache settled behind my eyes, another migraine that darkened my vision and thoughts. I didn’t like the darkness. He knew that. That was why he visited and shared his coffee—to stave off the darkness.

Sometimes it broke through, anyway. He said it just had to happen sometimes, but if we were friends, it wouldn’t be so often.

“Wake up.”

“I don’t like it,” I muttered, clutching my head.

“I know, little mutt.” He slid his hand over mine, cupping my face, but I pulled away. I didn’t like the darkness, and I didn’t like that, either. I didn’t like it when he touched me.

He released a disappointed sigh.

No. My eyes flashed to him, but he was fuzzy as he retreated. No, wait, I’m sorry.

“Remember what you read.” Another wave of black smoke wafted through my skull, the darkness I hated so much. “But forget I was here until I return.”

My vision went black, and moisture pooled in my eyes as my mind darkened, too. I lay back down, tears rolling down my face, wetting the soft fabric. I ran my thumb over it again and again. I couldn’t see the armrest, but it was soft and solid and familiar. It was real.

I heard the tent flap being unrolled, and then…

My brows furrowed. I sat up and glanced around the tent, sniffling as I wiped my cheeks.

“Why am I crying?” I asked under my breath.

“Wake up.”

Before I had the chance to reply, the world shook. No, hands shook me, my eyes rattling in my skull.

“Wake up.”

“I am awake!”

Something sharp pressed into my fingertip. Broke skin.

“Wake. Up.”

“Stop,” I begged.

Was it a needle? A pin? Metal pushed farther.

I screamed. “Stop, stop, stop.”

It yanked out, and I jerked awake, throat raw and joints stiff.

“What happened?” Rogue panted, crouching in front of me with my hand in his, one razor-sharp talon tipped in blood.

My eyes narrowed at it. Why ? —

I startled when a log popped in the fireplace, spitting a wave of embers up the flue.

Heaving out a breath, I scanned our surroundings. No Adonis. Only Rogue and I remained, not in a war tent, but in the library. Shadows grew larger as candles burned out, the fire slowly dimming, shelves upon shelves looming in the darkness.

“Ara.” Gentle fingers ran over my cheek, and I flinched, attention snapping back to him. He stilled before tucking my hair behind my ear. “You were having a nightmare.”

Was I?

“It felt…real.” I pushed off the arm of the chair and sat up, wincing at the pain in one finger. The cut was minor, much shallower than it felt in the dream.

The last nightmare he’d had to rip me from, he’d used his magic to shock my system awake, though he couldn’t do that anymore since his flames had been reduced to nothing more than a caress.

“Couldn’t burn me this time?” I asked with a halfhearted laugh, but the unspoken words were just as loud.

I couldn’t hurt him, but he could hurt me, though we both knew it was a moot realization.

Rogue tilted his head, his hands sliding along my calves. “Tell me.”

His sleeves were rolled to his elbows, the strings of his shirt pulled loose, revealing the hard plane of his chest, halved by his scar. The tip of his six-pointed sun peaked through the deep V, and beside it, the glint of silver metal, tucked beneath the black fabric.

Leaning forward, I slipped a finger beneath the chain and pulled it out. My lips twitched with a faint smile as I ran my thumb over the A pendant.

I opened my mouth to ask where my matching R was, but he closed his hand around mine. “Tell me what you saw.”

I blinked, circling my thumb over the small metal letter. “We were at a war camp during the Ten Year War.” I gently tucked the chain back into his shirt and reclined, tucking my knees to my chest and tugging the blanket up to my shoulders. “Adonis was there. He talked to me, and I…recognized him.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw, but his hands continued their soothing motion on my calves, now beneath the blanket. “It makes sense that you recognized him. I’m sure he was in the war camp often.”

Bile rose in my throat. “I thought he was my friend.”

His hands paused. “What?”

“He called me little mutt.” I grimaced and tightened my hands around the blanket until my fists shook, my knuckles white. “He called me that down there, too. Mutt. ”

My gut rolled, fingers trembling as words bubbled up, pushing on my lips to be spoken. I averted my gaze to the smoldering embers, fragmented light peeking through the blackened logs.

“I stood mostly, down there, chained to the wall. It was cold. Dark. They’d taken our…

my shoes. Livvy wasn’t there, but I…I thought she was.

” I blinked a few times when an ember floated up from the ash, climbing the flue.

“Barefoot,” I murmured, my eyes blurring as I slipped into some halfway state between now and then, here and there.

“The cold wasn’t as bad as the drowning, but the hallucinations… ”

I flinched when his hands moved. He slid his arms under my shoulders and knees, lifted me, and turned to sit, placing me in his lap. His skin warmed as he pulled the blanket over us, and I rested my head on his chest, a cry crawling up my throat.

His heart hammered beneath my ear, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t offer words of solace or understanding or even anger.

No, he listened. He listened and waited.

It was here that I was safe—safer than I’d ever been.

“That’s how he broke me. Not the starvation or the cold. Not the waterboarding. No, the visions.” My voice grew quieter until it was barely louder than a breath. “The visions…”

I forced my eyes wide open, refusing to yield to the flashes of memory waiting behind them, and knotted my hand in his shirt—my anchor to the present, to him.

I couldn’t elaborate. I couldn’t tell him what I saw.

I just couldn’t.

So I didn’t.

My lips sealed as numbness settled over me, but he didn’t push. He simply stroked my hair.

I stared out the nearest window. It held the portrait of a sleeping sea, painted in the darkest black, the first rays of sunrise sparking on the distant horizon.

He whispered, “You are the strongest force of nature.”

“I wasn’t strong,” I rasped, “not in the end. I gave up. I couldn’t tell time anymore. Hours, days, weeks, it all ran together. I couldn’t decipher reality from hell, and I wanted… I wanted to die just to feel some kind of relief. I tried. I?—”

“You’re here.” He slid his thumb over my cheek, wiping away the tears before lifting my hand to the base of my throat, my skin cold but slick with sweat.

He pressed my fingers into my pulse point, my heart beating erratically—but it was beating.

“You feel that? You’re here because you survived.

Because you’re alive. You’re alive because you were strong enough to withstand it all and escape.

Bone tired, starved, and terrified, you ran, Ara.

You ran, and that means something. It means everything.

Your sheer will to live means everything to me. ”

“Running…” A broken sound climbed my throat, halfway between a laugh and a cry, building and building until I held back a scream. “Always fucking running.”

“Aren’t we all running? Either to or from something, but only the strongest get where they’re going. And you and me? We’re strong as hell, and we’re fucking sprinting—and we’re going to keep sprinting, day in and day out, until we reach our peace. We’ll do it hand in hand, together.”

I sucked in a steadying breath. “Together.”

Rogue cupped the side of my head, holding me to his chest as he reclined on the back of the chair, his face tilted towards the window.

Fire consumed the stars, painting strokes of orange and pink over the dark sea.

“And then, we’ll never run again,” he whispered. “We’ll stop and breathe and exist. We’ll live. You and me, baby. Forever.”

Forever. The word floated into my being like an ember on the breeze and stayed there, catching fire. “Forever.”