Page 134 of A Heart So Haunted
The single word sent me into a tailspin. I grabbed for him, my reflection wild in the window over his shoulder.
He let me grab his forearms, pull him in. Forehead to forehead. The bones his face snapped into place. Sharper, harder, his skin shifting between flushed and grayed. The pressure hit my knees, rose up to my waist. The room felt muffled, concentrated.
“—we haven’t had enough time and I just—”I’m not ready for you to go yet, I wanted you to stay, I wanted more months with you, I wanted, I wanted, I wanted.
“Dearest—”
“You’re not listening to me! I wanted you to stay, I wanted you to be here, with me, I don’t want you to leave, what if you don’t exist anymore—”
“Lan, dearest, please—”
I cut in, more forceful. “I wanted—”
“Landry!” he roared.
“I need to fix you!” I shouted back, blood rushing up my neck. My hands pushed at his chest, around the wound, but the bleeding wasn’t slowing, wasn’t growing black and clotting, his heart pumping too strong to keep the blood where it needed to be—inside his body. “I can f-fix it!”
“You can’t fix me,” he growled. He captured both of my wrists with his single palm. “Stop.”
My teeth chattered in my skull. Spittle dripped down my chin. “No! It doesn’t end like this! You can’t just—this isn’t how it’s supposed to happen—”
“How do you know that?” he asked, voice softening.
“Because you can’t leave!” I shouted, tears streaking my cheeks. Why did I feel likeI was ending?
He pulled my hands against his neck. Kept them knotted there in an ironclad grasp.
“We both knew I could never stay.” His mouth quirked to the side. Red tinged his teeth. A slight shake of his head. All those angles I once thought so terrifying, now they looked too beautiful to simply cease existing. “What did I say? The train.” A shallow breath. His big body swayed. “Sometimes you have to get off at the next stop.”
I wriggled my wrists from his grasp. “Don’t get off at this stop. Stay with me at Harthwait for a while—just don’t—not yet.”
A tightness strangled my heart.
Force someone to stay, and that is not love, a little voice murmured.
“Landry, dearest,” he whispered. My eyes met Hadrian’s. Even his horns had started to curl up, away. I pressed one bloodied hand to his cheek, the other to his shoulder. As if I wanted to hold him together, hold him up like he had me in the living room, our feet moving in tandem, his smile with mine.
“Do not be angry,” he hissed. Then his neck snapped to one side.
Ifeltthe vibration through my palm, up the entirety of my arm. The crack of his trachea and thyroid cartilage.
For the first time, the fragile flutters in his chest stopped.
His head slumped against my palm, but he was too heavy for me to hold. He hit the floor in a heap, so hard that one of his horns snapped at the end.
I dropped, knees first, in a keening scream.
“No, no, no, no, you can’t do this yet. We didn’t—I’m notready, Hadrian, don’t you daredo this to me!”
My hands touched his neck, his chest, his wrist. I clutched him for dear life. He was too heavy to keep upright. So I leaned close, I aligned my nose with his, I cried at him, because I needed him. I needed his body, that warmth, I needed him to move, but he wasn’t moving.
Sweat slithered between my shoulder blades, down my temple. Over and over, my fingers found his neck. There was no pulse.
No pulse.
“Hadrian,” I panted. “Hadrian. Wake up.” I patted his cheek, desperate in disbelief. “Hadrian, please, wake up. Wake up, Hadrian, please, please,please.”
I rolled him onto his back, grabbed his face in my hands. The lines of his jaw blurred. His hair, soft to the touch, fell to the floor around his pointed ears. I pressed my forehead to his again, whispering prayers and wishes and hopes and cries into his skin, as if that would will him to blink. Will him to wake.
