Page 128 of Point of No Return

Crew.

But he’s too small to be Crew. My voice breaks when I realize who it is. “Aleks?”

“Charlotte?” Aleks lowers the gun, and I realize I’ve made a mistake too late when I hear a gunshot ring out from behind me. I watch in horror as Aleks collapses.

No!

They aim at Skar next.

Panic has me shooting into action, grabbing Skar’s gun and firing off a single round in the direction of the person who’d shot him. I miss.

One moment, I’m across the bridge and the next I’m knocking the gun out of their hand. I use my momentum to wrap my legs around their middle. We struggle, my arms around their throat. They’re nearly twice my size, and the breath is knocked out of me when they slam me backwards into the bridge siding.

We’re grappling with my gun now, but they have the upperhand, shoving me into the stone harder. Their hands dig into my side, and I scream when they tear into my bullet wound, pain hitting me in a dizzying wave.

I lock my legs around them tighter, lifting them off their feet long enough to yank the gun away. I fire off a bullet, cursing when the gun clicks, magazine empty.

I slam the gun into their skull instead, but their hands have already found my wrists, slamming them into the bridge above my head with enough force that I drop the gun over the side.

“Don’t fucking move!” Skar yells, and just as another gunshot fills the air, the person shoves me backwards.

I’m free falling. The wind is cold, the pain is hot, and when I hit the water, my mind is completely blank. The force hits me like concrete, and pain is a vivid thing digging into my body. Water swallows me, and all I feel is fire across every inch of my skin.

Water. Drowning.

My arms shoot out, floundering against the waves as memory after memory comes hurtling back. My mother. Prevya. My sister. The hot sand. The cold waves. Eva’s hands holding me beneath the water. I’m powerless to stop any of it. My mother was right all along. I’m weak- too weak to do what needs to be done. It should’ve been Camila. She could’ve saved our people…

My chest feels hollow, and the water presses in, grabbing hold of my last gasp of oxygen. I expect nothingness- the absence of mind, of thought, of body. There’s hot and then there’s cold, and drowning is just like it was last time… Except peace doesn’t come.

Maybe what I felt during death wasn’t peace at all.

I felt peace in Venine while looking out over the water with Aleks. I felt peace the first time I woke up next to Skar in our bed. I felt peace when I got drinks with Liv for the last time. I’ve felt peace in the presence of the people I love… and never once has that been with my parents.

And I realize that my mother was wrong. She was wrong, and death cannot take my peace from me again. I force my legs to kick and my arms to push, and somehow, the water feels lighter.

I remember swimming, I remember treading water and making it to the surface. And I do. I surface, coughing up the water in my lungs. I can just barely make out the sandy harbor on the other side of the bridge. Though pain lances through me, I force myself to swim to it.

Each stroke is an eternity and movement is a curse, but as I feel the wet sand beneath my hands, I pull myself onto land. My head falls to the ground.

Get up, I will myself, but my body is weak under the weight of exhaustion.I am safe. I am alive. I will be okay.I can feel my vision fading as blood continues to soak through my clothes.

I can’t die, I tell myself, but even as I try to sit upright, I know my body won’t cooperate.

“Hell.” I hear someone approaching, and I feel two hands grab hold of me, hoisting me upright.

“You had better not be dead, Char.” Two brown eyes peer down at my face, and I feel the man’s hands push the wet strands of hair out of my eyes.

“Open your eyes. You’re gonna be alright, Char.”

I smile, but it’s a small thing. Recognition fades in and out of my grasp, pain stronger. “Always… the optimist, Warden.”

Tiredness is pulling at me, sleep coming fast. “You’re not dying like this. You’re just fucking not,” he promises, voice growing distant.

The last thing I see before darkness swallows me whole is Crew’s hands and Aleks’ smile and my husband’s eyes.

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Skar

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