Page 110 of Queen of Diamonds

I couldn’t… I couldn’t bear a world that had stolen her away.

Even when she wasn’t with me, she was a storm in the distance, beautiful and alive; a power that never ended.

Until it had.

For one world-ending moment while I was in the pharmacy, I’d felt my Everstorm die; the other half of my heart swallowed into the void. The gun became a lead weight in my hand as the world drained of colour, and reality stopped making sense.

I was too late.

For the worst few seconds of my life, she was gone, and a whole bleak future began to unravel. I didn’t know how I would survive it. Since the moment I’d met her, we were connected, as if, with every exhale of her lungs, I could draw breath, so without her I didn’t know how to live. There were a thousand seconds before me, in a world she wasn’t a part of, then a thousand after that, and I didn’t know how to leave Knight…

I was lost.

Completely and utterly.

Except, with a bolt of brilliant energy, she’d come back. Not just to this world, but—beyond my wildest dreams—she was in the bond with us.

I took a deep breath, steadying myself as I rested her hand at her side, the wounds upon it now clean. I was still suspended between those two worlds—the one before me, and the one that had, for a brief moment, begun to take shape. Empty and bleak.

I swallowed my fear, wrapping the bandage gently and securing it.

Where was the basin?

That was next. I had to keep going. What if she woke like this?

With both hands done, I washed the blood away, smears of it upon her arms, neck, and face, but as I finished, my panic began clawing its way back up my throat.

My eyes snagged on Zed, whose arm was still curled around Glade’s waist.

He was unconscious, but I felt his echo like a ghost in the bond, terrified and broken.

I blinked, tilting my head as I examined him. Knight wasn’t the only member of the pack who continued to challenge the reality my father had tried to brand into my soul.

Zed had shattered into a million pieces today. I’d felt it in the bond, and heard it in the desperation of his voice as we’d been able to do nothing but listen through comms.

I had been taught to idolise him, born with Maverick blood—someone I might dream of one day being selected for as a pack mate. Zed was raised to be brutal and deadly, the pinnacle of what it meant to be an Alpha.

And he was in pieces. For us.

For her.

When we’d found those roses and cards—when we’d, at last, realised the truth—there hadn’t been a moment where Zed had considered the offer of freedom and money. He had risked his life for his scent match, and when she’d fallen, he had fallen with her.

He didn’t value himself more, as an Alpha. It was endlessly curious to me how far he’d distanced himself from the fathers who had raised us.

I dipped the cloth into the basin, shifting beside him. There was crusted blood across his face in the prints of thin fingers.

Glade’s blood.

He didn’t deserve to wake to that.

He flinched as the warm cloth touched his skin.

I closed my fist in his hair, ignoring his growl of panic, and wiped it off. One stroke at a time. I’d never realised, until now, how much I needed him as a pillar. Just like Knight.

So, I ignored his low sounds of distress, and rid him of every stain of blood, but for the fading pink in his silver hair.

Only, eventually, I was done with that, too.

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