Page 54 of Ghosts of the Dead

It comes fast after that.

The sob.

The first one hits so hard I choke on it.

The next one rips through my ribs like it wants to crack them open.

Then I’m screaming again, but this time there are no words, only grief. I crumple into myself with my arms over my head like I can hold myself together with skin alone, but I can’t.

My chest starts to lock up. The crushing tightness claws its way up my throat, making each breath a battle. My vision tunnels as panic joins the grief, feeding off it, making everything worse. I can’t breathe. Can’t think. Can’t function.

I don’t know how long I stay like that, gasping and choking on air that won’t come. Eventually, the world shifts again. The air moves differently.

There’s a shape at my back. Boots in the dirt. A body kneeling beside me.

A warm hand touches the middle of my back. They don’t say anything; not a single word. They let me fall apart, and somehow, that’s the only thing that holds me.

Then, barely louder than the wind, he says, “You don’t have to do it alone, you know.”

I’m too far gone to match the voice to the man, but it has me sobbing again. My chest still seizes with each attempted breath.

Summer was here. She was so close. And now I might be too late.

A low whine cuts through my grief, and I look up through tear-filled eyes to see Luna approaching. Her steps are slow and her dark eyes fix on me. She doesn’t hesitate this time. She comes right up to me, sniffs my face, then presses her warm, solid body against me.

The moment she settles against my front, my breathing evens out. The panic that was clawing at my chest loosens its grip. She’s warm and real, and somehow that anchors me back to the present. The fractured reality I never asked for.

I wrap my arms around her, burying my face in her rough fur as the last waves of panic subside into exhausted sobs. She doesn’t pull away. She stays solid and warm against me, letting me fall apart while keeping me tethered to something real. Something alive.

“She’s lost, too,” I choke out against Luna’s fur.

She whimpers in understanding, then licks my cheek.

“We’re both lost,” I whisper. “Aren’t we?”

19

JACE

She’s too quiet.

I mean, she’s always a little quiet. Thoughtful and sharp when she needs to be, and silent when she doesn’t, but this is something else. This is hollow.

Mars crouches in front of her, dabbing at the raw skin on her knees. She scraped them up pretty bad while tearing her way through the docks. There’s an even deeper cut on her shin above the bootline. It probably needs stitches, but we need to find the supplies for that first.

Luna hasn’t left her side since the bunker. The German Shepherd who’d run away from human touch, now lies pressed against Autumn’s leg with her dark eyes alert and watchful. Now and then, the dog shifts even closer, as if sensing Autumn’s need for comfort.

Mars doesn’t merely patch her up. Not like I would have. He turns it into a damn production.

He gives her medical care with a flourish. He tells some dumb story while he tends to her wounds. Something about a rotter slipping in a puddle and face-planting in the mud. He even adds sound effects. It’s ridiculous. He’s never had this sense of humor before meeting her.

Now he’s telling her about the time he saw a bird’s nest inside the visible ribcage of a rotter. How does he come up with this shit?

Autumn doesn’t laugh. She doesn’t smile, either. She keeps staring ahead like she’s looking right through him.

Caspian sits by the fire, stacking the wood he’s been collecting into piles.

He looks odd without the black hoodie he’s worn every day since I met him six months ago while ambushed by dregs. He’d cowered to their demands and gave them all his food and supplies to get them to go away, and I’d taken him under my wing after that. He used to jump at his own shadow, but something’s been changing in him. I don’t know if he realizes it, but I see it.

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