Page 88 of Too Dangerous To Die

“It’s not.”

Her hands press against the cracks in my skin—real cracks, now, spiderwebbing across my chest, down my arms. The stone isn’t shifting. It’s fracturing. Splitting from the inside.

She sees it.

And horror dawns.

“No,” she breathes. “No, no, no—what’s happening to you?”

I reach up. Brush my thumb along her jaw.

Slow. Gentle.

One last time.

“When I brought you back…” My voice breaks, and I cough, tasting ash. “You were gone. No breath. Almost no heartbeat. You were supposed to die, Nora.”

She shakes her head violently. “Don’t say that.”

“But I couldn’t let you go.” I smile, faint and broken. “So I made a bargain. The only kind Protheka recognizes.”

Her eyes gleam wet in the fading light.

Tears.

“I gave my life,” I whisper. “For yours. Even if I die now, you won’t die. Our bond will be severed the moment I die.”

What I didn’t tell her is my soul will burn forever, unable to rest and will forever wander in the void.

Her breath stutters. “That’s not—You can’t just?—”

“Nothing in Protheka is freely given,” I murmur, my voice quiet now, my chest aching with every heartbeat. “It always takes something back.”

She collapses over me, hands gripping my shoulders, shaking. “Then take it back. Give it to me.I don’t want it without you.”

I manage a laugh. It’s rough. Soft. Real.

“You’ve always had it.”

She leans in, forehead pressed to mine. “Please don’t do this. Please don’t leave me.”

“I didn’t know what it was,” I say, fingers brushing her hair from her face, even as they begin to crumble. “That feeling. Why I kept choosing you. Saving you. Fighting beside you. It was always love, wasn’t it?”

Her sob rips through the surroundings like a dagger.

“Yes.” she chokes. “It was. Itis.”

I close my eyes.

Not to die.

But to remember the last thing I want to see.

Her.

“Then it was worth it.”

And I smile as the cracks deepen.

---