Page 57 of Too Dangerous To Die

“I know.” His voice is quiet. “Next time, I’ll stop.”

There’s a long pause.

I murmur, “You shouldn’t have to.”

He doesn’t reply—but his hand finds mine, our fingers tangling together without fanfare, without force.

Just… there.

Together in the ruin of everything we were.

Bound.

Damned.

I think maybe… not alone.

26

RHAEGAR

Two days pass.

Two days of silence thick enough to drown in. Of unspoken apologies and restless magic simmering just beneath her skin.

I don’t touch her again.

Not because I don’t want to. Not because the hunger’s gone—if anything, it’s worse now, knowing what she tastes like, what she sounds like when she breaks open beneath me.

But because I took too much. And now the part of her that lives inside me won’t shut up.

I feel her even when she’s on the other side of the ruin. Her heartbeat, the whisper of her magic, the low hum of her dreams when she finally sleeps. I know it’s a result of what we did. Of what Ilethappen.

She trains each day beneath the archway of a half-collapsed corridor, hurling her power at shattered stone and old glyphs carved into the walls. Her control is improving—less feral, more focused—but the flare-ups still come. When her mind drifts. When the whispering gets louder. When she forgets she’s not just Nora anymore.

I watch her from the shadows, jaw tight. She doesn’t know I’m looking for answers. She doesn’t see the runes I sketch when she’s not watching—the old texts I scrape from the walls, the bloodmarks I test on stone.

Theremustbe a way to unbind her from the Wraithborn.

To keep them from claiming her.

Because they will come back. They always do. And next time, they won’t just watch from the edges of the Wastes. They’ll take.

I’ve seen what happens when a soul is split between two masters.

It shatters.

And she’s already cracking.

“You want to leave,” she says behind me, interrupting my thoughts. Her voice is low, but not uncertain. She’s standing at the archway, arms folded, magic sparking faintly along her fingers.

I glance up. “Yes.”

Her mouth curves—not quite a smile. “Because you’re scared.”

I narrow my eyes. “Because I’m notstupid.”

She strides toward me, each step defiant. “You want to run every time the past reaches out its hand. That’s not strength, Rhaegar. That’s fear.”

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