Page 165 of Tower of Ash and Darkness
“No!”
I won’t stop.I can’t.
“I can stillfeelhim.”
The magic twists and writhes, wrapping around Callum in dark tendrils. I press harder, ignoring the sharp pain building in my chest, ignoring the voices pleading with me to stop. I will drown in my own magic. I will offer every piece of myself, even the ones I haven’t yet learned to love, if it means he will open his eyes and look at me once more.
“I won’t lose you,” I whisper. “Not like this. Please, Callum. Come back to me.”
My hands stay pressed to him, slick with his blood, my fingers trembling violently as the pain begins to bloom—hot, sharp, unrelenting. It hurts. Gods, ithurts.
“Lailah, stop.”
Casper’s voice slices through the storm—low, steady, and laced with something I’ve only ever heard when he says my name. That velvet tone, dark and commanding, the one that always finds me no matter how far I fall. Slowly, I lift my head, breath ragged, my vision swimming through tears.
He stands just beyond the edge of the barrier, his eyes locked on mine—fierce, unblinking. But it isn’t anger I see. It’s fear, carved into the set of his jaw, threaded through the furrow of his brow. A kind of fear I’ve never seen in him before.
And it’s forme.
Another surge of darkness pours out of me, savage and devouring. It tears through the muscle of my arms, splinters into my ribs,coils around my spine like barbed wire. Each pulse is violent, my veins burning black with power I was never meant to wield like this. It shreds through me with no mercy, shattering whatever is left of my strength. My teeth clench against a cry, but it rips from me anyway—a sound raw and jagged, as if my soul is being dragged out with every flicker of light I force into him.
The barrier around us hums louder, shaking with the echo of my ruin, but I’m barely aware of it. My magic is eating me alive, strip by strip, nerve by nerve, and still I pour it into him.
My back arches as another surge hits, but I don't falter—Ican’t. Not until I know. Not until I see his eyes again.
“Callum…”The words rip from my throat, a desperate cry against the suffocating silence.“Please.”
Then—like a whisper from the wreckage—a breath.
So faint I almost miss it. A flutter, a tremor beneath my palms, more ghost than life. My heart lurches violently, hope surging like blood through a burst vein, sharp and sudden and terrifying. I freeze, unsure if I imagined it, or if it was some cruel spark of memory lodged in my hands.
But then it happens again.
Stronger this time. A staggered inhale. A rise and fall, shallow but real, dragging air through lungs that moments ago had fallen silent. I can feel it now—the slow rhythm building beneath my touch, unsteady, faint, but growing. A heartbeat. A fragile pulse, thudding weakly against my fingers like a drum that refuses to stay silent.
The wound knits together before my eyes, muscle drawing inward, blood coagulating, thick and sluggish until it stops completely. Skin closes over torn flesh like time is reversing itself, like death has been denied its claim. Magic flows relentlessly through the air, heavy with pain and sacrifice. I can feel it twisting through him, through every fiber and vein, through me, through the very earth.
For a moment I forget how to move, how to breathe, how tohope.
Then his chest rises.
And the faint thrum of his heart steadies beneath my hands. Thewave of relief is overwhelming. It tears through me, ripping sobs from my throat.
Then he gasps.
A sharp, sudden inhale that wrenches his body upward. His chest lifts, his throat gapes, and the sound he makes is wet with pain, but alive. His dark eyes flutter open, dazed and unfocused at first, until they find mine. And when they do, something inside me caves.
I reach for him without thinking, pulling him into me, anchoring him with every trembling limb I have left. My arms wrap around his body, desperate, possessive, as though holding him tightly enough might convince the world not to take him again. I bury my face in his shoulder. His skin is warm. His breath is real. His heartbeat stutters against mine,alive.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Alias mutters from behind me in disbelief. But his words barely register.
I lift my head slowly, exhaustion threatening to force my eyes to close. But as I force myself to look up, the world no longer feels the same—the barrier is gone, dissolved into the air as if it had never existed, and every figure in the clearing stands frozen, wide-eyed and unblinking, their attention locked on Callum.
My tears fall freely, soaking into his shirt, and for a moment I stay there, clinging to him as everything around us stills. Slowly, reluctantly, I pull back, brushing at my face as I look at him again, relief and weariness tangling together.
“Maybe I should get that leash for you after all,” I murmur, a faint smile tugging at my lips as I try to mask the overwhelming flood of emotions.
His lips twitch into a small smile, weak but real, easing the lingering ache in my heart. He grunts softly, his voice raspy.
