Page 156 of A Curse of Hope and Shadows: Part I
Even if it was only to hold him as he died.
No, no, no, no...
She reached for him, pulling him into her arms—
The monster twisted upright, towering over her.
“Adeline!” Elliott screamed.
Someone fumbled for the pistol.
“Don’t!” she yelled.
The monster’s face hovered inches over hers, red eyes pale and gleaming. Blood pumped from his torso, crimson against the tangled fur.
He did not have long.
Shedid not have long.
“You’re all right, Dimitri,” she told him, because he deserved that lie, deserved to have one more moment of feeling safe.Shedeserved that lie, too, because nothing would ever be all right after tonight.
Wherever you go, you take me with you.
If this was a fairytale, a kiss would work. But a kiss had never freed him before.
And so, she freed herself instead.
“I love you, Dimitri,” she whispered, the words crackling in the air between them, ice over a candle. “I will always love you.”
He panted, ragged and hard, his blood dripping onto her chest.
Your blood belongs there,she thought,if you bleed, I bleed too.
For a second, something flickered in his eyes, like the rage residing. They shimmered faintly blue in the fragile light. A cruel trick, to give her one last look at that beautiful eye, to imagine it twinned.
She even imagined there was less fur on his face, that his muzzle was growing shorter. The more she stared, the more human he looked. Perhaps he was turning back after all, the monster leaking out with his life force.
She placed a hand to his wound, as if hoping to hold in the blood, to give them a few more seconds—
It was no longer bleeding.
Dimitri’s breathing slowed, knitting back to normalcy. The fur vanished from his face—all of his face. He put his hand against Adeline’s, and found it normal. Recognition sparked in his eyes.
Adeline clutched his face, two perfect, flawless cheeks, and he clutched at them too, feeling flesh where there had once been fur.
And then, most wonderfully, he looked at her. Looked at her like she was the wondrous, marvellous thing, the creature of transformation.
“Adeline,” he breathed, and fell swiftly into her arms.
Chapter Thirty-Six: The Curse Broken
Adeline held fast to Dimitri, fingers tangled into his hair as he leant against her, mud-streaked, naked, covered in blood.
But alive.
He was alive.
Someone screamed, running towards them and pulling Dimitri off her.
