Page 72 of Born Free

“I found you,” he breathes, the words reverent with strained reprieve.

But I pull back, even as my own tears fill my eyes. Because something is changed.

“Roman, your hair,” I gape. My fingers rise to lace into his strands.

No longer are they black as night. Roman’s hair is now pure white.

“Yourhair,” he echoes.

I pull my hair forward, looking down at the length that falls over my shoulder.

It’s no longer a warm blonde. It’s as snow white as Roman’s.

“What did you do?” I ask, feeling my entire body shaking. Because I know it. That darkness I fell into after I kissed that shadow version of Roman was death.

Realdeath.

Roman shakes his head. “I woke back up, and you were dead. And you weren’t waking up, Juliet. Five minutes. Twenty minutes. A whole damn hour went by, and you weren’t waking up.”

A tear races down his beautiful cheek, and his heartbreak cracks my own.

He shakes his head. “I don’t understand what happened. I… I grabbed your mother’s gift, and I begged anyone, anything listening.”

Roman holds out the necklace he took from around my neck, the one I wear always. It contained my mother’s gift, extracted from Archer King and bound to the crystal.

It’s glowed brilliant red since that day.

But now, lying in Roman’s hand, it’s nothing more than a simple white crystal again.

“I felt her, Juliet,” Roman says. Those blue eyes of his lock on mine and the entire room hums with the weight of what has just happened. “Your mother. I felt her gift. I begged. I promised anything, if only it would bring you back.”

I reach a hand up, caressing his cheek. I’d done the same thing. Offered up everything, no limits, so long as it meant he could come back.

“And then it felt like my entire soul was being shredded,” Roman says, his voice shaking.

“Mine too,” I confess, sitting up just a little straighter.

Roman nods, his eyes drifting to my changed hair.

“But it feels whole now,” I say as my hand comes to my chest. There’s something different there. Something bigger. My eyes shift back to Roman’s.

It’s him.

It’s him I feel there.

No longer just myself there. But Roman as well.

“She bound our souls together,” I whisper.

Roman nods, his eyes so vivid and filled with disbelief. “She cursed us.”

Tears fall down my cheeks as I rush forward, crushing my lips to his.

I should not have been able to save Roman again. He should have stayed dead. But I pushed past my limits. I gave it all.

And Roman did not accept my death. Not for a second. Instead, he offered up his own soul. He pulled me from the grasp of death, something I never should have been able to stay in the clutches of.

Death. Death has been my life for so long now.

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