Chapter 37
My vision swims. The lights overhead bleed into a throbbing, white-hot halo. Everything blurs at the edges—shadows dripping into one another, Sterling’s silhouette smearing across my field of view. All I can really see is the blood pooled across the marble in front of me. Impossible amounts of it.
I don’t even know how many times I was shot. Three? Four? More? It doesn’t matter. The holes blur together now. My ribs grind with every breath. My heartbeat is a weak, fluttering tap against bone.
And Sterling is still fucking talking.
I try to focus on his words, to burn them into my brain so I can find him later in whatever hell I’m headed to and rip out his tongue with my fucking teeth. My chin falls forward, the weight of my skull suddenly impossible. The collar bites deeper into my throat as gravity pulls me down.
Stay awake.
Don’t fucking blackout.
Not yet.
Sterling steps down from the podium and approaches the platform. The room leans with him. Or maybe I’m the one tilting.
“Tonight marks the end of disease. The end of unchecked violence. The end of the Sovereign as it was.”
His shoes stop inches from my blood-soaked knees.
“This is the old world’s last breath.”
I try to lift my head. Try to meet his eyes. But my body refuses. My muscles shake violently, threatening to give out entirely.
Is this it? Is this where it ends? On my fucking knees in front of this motherfucking bastard.
I taste blood and the bitter, humiliating truth of it—he finally got me where he wanted me. Fucker.
He lifts a blade, the metal catches the spotlight and sends a shard of cold light across my vision.
This is it.
This—
A crack splits the air.
Then another. Distant at first, then closer.
The crowd turns as one, smoke curls beneath the doors. Boots. Shouts. The thundering rhythm of breach charges and assault fire. Sterling’s head snaps toward the entrance. “Get those—”
Boom.
The hall’s main doors explode inward in a spray of splinters and steel. Gunfire tears through the vaulted chamber. Screams echo off the marble.
Beautiful, goddamn chaos.
I laugh—or try to. It shreds through my lungs, comes out as a raw, blood-soaked wheeze. Pain rips through my chest and blood splashes across my lips before I spit more on the floor. My head sags forward, chains dragging against the collar.
“F—fuck you…” I mutter toward the blur of Sterling at the podium.
The guards surrounding me pivot, weapons raised.
“NO!”
I feel her before I understand what’s happening—small arms locking around my ribs, her chest pressed to mine. Her breath hits my neck in sharp, panicked bursts. My head drops against her shoulder. I try to lift my arms—try to shield her—but the chains bite deeper, metal grinding into open wounds.
“Kitten…” My voice shreds itself against her collarbone. “You have to go. You can’t…you can’t be here. You can’t—”
“I’m not leaving you,” she chokes out.
She’s trying to cover me.
A human shield. My little one putting her body between me and a hailstorm of bullets.
It guts me.
“Arlo—please! You can’t die for me. Don’t—don’t do this. Don’t you fucking do this.”
Gunfire cracks again—so close sparks dance across the marble. She jerks violently, screaming.
The sound tears through me.
Not like pain.
Not like rage.
Like annihilation.
She folds lower, curling around me, her fingers shaking as they dig into my skin. “I’m okay. I’m okay—it’s just—it’s just my shoulder—don’t move. Please don’t move, please don’t—”
No. No. No!
That’s all it takes. That scream. Her pain. Her blood on my chest. Her tears on my throat. Something detonates inside me—the last flicker of the monster they made me, the last spark of the weapon Valcross carved out of bone and suffering.
I feel it ignite.
My heart spikes and my ribs heave. Every tendon in my arms strains until something tears. Pain erupts so violently I nearly black out.
But I don’t.
I hold on.
Because she’s on top of me, and she’s bleeding, and she screamed like she was dying—and I can’t let that happen.
The chains snarl around me, but I heave against them anyway, a ragged roar ripping straight from my lungs. My muscles seize. My vision whites out. Something cracks—metal or bone, I don’t know—and I keep pulling, keep fighting, keep tearing myself apart because she’s here.
The right shackle snaps. Darkness floods the edges of my vision. My left hand slips free next, dripping blood.
I wrap both arms around her, barely functioning, and drag her into me, beneath me, around me. My entire body curls over hers, shielding her with whatever pieces of myself I still control.
Bullets rain around us like metal hail. Screams ricochet off stone. Men die. The hall fractures into a warzone. And I don’t let go. She came for me. She didn’t let me die alone.
I press my lips to her hair.
“I love you. If this is it—if this is all I get—I love you.”
She sobs, gripping me harder.
“No. Don’t say goodbye. I can’t lose you. Don’t you dare—don’t you dare go. I love you, Priest. I need you. Please!”
She loves me.
My arms tighten around her blood-soaked body as the world tilts. Everything goes dim—except her. The only goddamn thing that ever made me want to live.
And just before the dark takes me, my gaze locks on a figure cutting through the smoke—Arsen. Cornering Sterling with his rifle raised. Putting a bullet straight through his fucking chest.