Page 39 of Vows & Violence
“No,” I say, grabbing his face. “You’re not.”
Then I kiss him. Hard. Fierce. Like I can taste the life still in him and claim it back from the grave. I kiss him like fire licks dry kindling. Like death didn’t get what it came for.
When I pull back, I keep my hands on him. “They marked you,” I say. “They were going to use you to get to me.”
“I figured that out,” Ghost mutters, nodding to the altar. “Real subtle guys.”
“This isn’t over,” I whisper. “The Hollow Sons didn’t just want blood tonight. They wanted a goddamn prophecy”
“They didn’t get it,” Ghost says.
“No.” I grip his shirt, eyes locked on his. “Because I rewrote the ending.”
Ghost searches my face. I let him see everything. No masks. No armor. Just truth.
“I’ll burn the world,” I promise, “before I lose you to gods and monsters.”
I don’t laugh. I’m still shaking. Still burning. I almost lost him, but never again.
Chapter Eighteen
Phoenix
The fire eats the compound slowly. We’re outside now, standing beneath the skeletal remains of a dying temple. Smoke rises behind us, thick and bitter, choking out the last of the Hollow Sons' legacy. Their altars are ash. Their symbols are cracked and trampled in the dirt. Whatever prophecy they were trying to summon died in that room, by my hand.
Poison gives the order, and Wendigo lights the second fuse.
The tunnels collapse one by one, controlled charges rumbling through the earth like thunder. Debris rains down into the pit behind us. Final. Cleansing.
What’s left of the Hollow Sons scatters. Some of them, the police drag out in cuffs, bloody, gasping, cursing fate like it was supposed to shield them from justice. Others? They didn’t make it out. And we won’t lose sleep over that.
I stand back, blade sheathed at my hip, Glock still warm in my hand. Ghost is beside me. He’s bruised and bloody, but his eyes are wide open. He hasn’t let go of me since we left that room, and I haven’t let go of him.
For once, I don’t feel the itch to disappear. Don’t feel the burn to run ahead of grief before it catches me. Right now, the world’s on fire, and all I want is to watch it burn standing at Ghost's side.
Poison steps over to me, nodding toward the inferno. “We’re done here.”
“Not yet,” I say, glancing toward the last tunnel mouth. “One more for everything they took.”
She doesn’t argue. Just jerks her chin at Kitty, and he walks the last charge into place.
The final boom is quieter than the rest. A heartbeat, almost. Then the earth goes still.
Ghost leans in, voice soft. “You didn’t have to come for me.”
I turn to him. He doesn’t get it. Not yet. He thinks I saved him because I’m good. Or because I owe him something. He doesn’t understand what I really did in that room.
“I didn’t come to save you,” I say. “I came to choose you.”
His brow furrows. “Phoenix…”
“No.” I grab his hand and place it over my heart beating hard against my chest. “You feel that? That’s yours. I’ve spent years giving pieces of myself to war, to duty, to pain. But this? This last piece? You get it.”
Ghost stares at me like I’ve just rewritten gravity.
I look back at the ruins of what they tried to make me. A weapon, a warning, a woman who doesn’t need anyone.
They failed.
