20. Chapter twenty #2
If my black, shriveled heart even understands what that is. But if this all-consuming ache tearing through my ribs is what love feels like, this firestorm of fear, fury, and fragile goddamn hope…
Then yeah. I guess I do.
I love him.
“Live, Kieran. Live .” I say the words he explained once to me on a quiet night. The exact words his mother whispered as she bled out in his arms. Her dying wish stitched into his spine.
His magnificent blue eyes go wide, the pain surging forward like a wave, and then it shifts and hardens. That sorrow sharpening into something else. Determination. So pure and blinding, it hits me like a fucking freight train.
“You live, Max,” he breathes. “Please do.”
I lower my head, press our foreheads together, grounding us both in the only thing that matters now. If Roe isn’t on time with whatever he has planned, if this has to be the end—our end—I want him to know.
“If we survive this,” I mutter, so quiet it’s almost not there, “I’m going to say it. Those three words I know you want to hear.” My voice cracks, fuck, and I grit my teeth. “But I need you to live first.”
Then I do what I always do. I put my swords back, grab his throat, tilt his head back, and slam my lips down on his, where they belong.
Just as the red rain starts to fall in a slow drip.
I snap my gaze up, let my hand drop, and frown as the clouds roll over the Pit and the now frenzied crowd that hunkers under tarps. The sirens start to wail and the Walkers behind the gate go absolutely berserk.
But the gate… it stops rising. A lone Walker tries to squeeze through the bottom and only manages to tear itself apart in the effort.
“What the—” I start, but something shifts in the crowd. A ripple. And it isn’t the bloodlust that usually runs through the Touched. No… it’s something else.
Screams and curses rip from the dais. I snap my head up just in time to see Roe—calm as a storm—holding a dagger to Noura’s throat.
Holy shit.
A satisfied smirk ghosts across his face as he leans in and whispers to her. Her eyes blow wide with pure fear. She jerks as if struck, claws at his arm, but his grip is a lock and the blade is an absolute promise.
Hope so fucking raw and stupid blooms in my chest
Because it’s not only him. Watchers are everywhere now, his Watchers, throwing off cloaks.
They were hidden in the audience and are now stepping forward.
They force the few fake Watchers to the ground, guns or knives pressed to their backs.
Others fan out on the dais, holding several council members under hard control.
Not all of them. Some still sit, probably in on Roe’s plan, but the balance has shifted.
The Pit snaps from chaos to a deadly, controlled silence.
The roar of the crowd falters, the Touched, twitching and half-lost in their haze, fall still. Even the sirens die.
All the while the red rain keeps pouring, slow and sick, the sky spitting infection and rot.
The red rain…
I jerk my head to Kieran. He’s standing there, fixed on the dais, a frown creasing his face while red streaks glide over his beautiful face.
“ Kee ,” I breathe, because he doesn’t react. No twitch in his muscles, no shifting eyes, no telltale sign… He’s just standing solid, present in his own mind, staring at the man who might have saved us, soaked in red.
He blinks my way, and a blinding, stupid hope lights his eyes up. “He saved us.”
“ Kee ,” I say again, wonder threading my voice. A manic cackle escapes me, sharp and surprised.
“I know. ” His smile is blinding, the ocean swirling. “Roe saved us. We’re going to survive.”
“No. I mean yes. Yes , we will. But shit, Kee . It’s raining .”
He looks up then. Tiny red splatters pepper his forehead, dot his cheeks. He exhales, flat. “I know… It doesn’t matter. I’m already infected.”
I shake my head, grab his shoulders, start shaking him. “No, Kee. It’s raining.”
I just can’t get the words out, but I see the moment it clicks in his head. His eyes widen, his mouth falls open. “I’m not… I’m not—”
“ No!” I cut him off. He’s Immune. The bastard is Immune . “You’re not responding, Kee. You’re not twitching and not—” My voice breaks under the weight of that word.
“Not Touched,” he finishes for me.
“No, you’re not. Fuck, I think you’re like me.” The words tumble out, less a question and more a prayer turned into a promise. My heart soars, then sputters, then rockets back to life.
“What?” he looks astonished. “I’m like you?”
“You’re Immune. ” The world narrows to the heat of him under my hands, to the stupid, ridiculous relief flooding my skull.
A sob wrecks through him as the weight of it finally hits. He almost folds in on himself for a second, shaking, and then he throws himself at me.
Arms on my shoulders, face buried in my neck, shuddering. All sticky and wet and fucking amazing. “I’m Immune. Oh shit. Do you really think it’s true?”
“You are. I just know it’s true. That crescent mark on your arm… it makes sense.”
He lifts his head, blinks at me, then down at his arm. “Oh, fuck. You’re right… My mother…” His voice trails off. His damned mother. She tried everything to keep him safe, to hide him from the world.
The world they came from didn’t fuck around with Immunes. They locked them away, used them for experiments. She kept him safe in the only way she could: by not telling him what she’d figured out when he was still a kid.
And now he’s here. Immune. Safe. Mine. Fucking ours for however long I can have him. Rain and Walkers be damned.
I can have him forever.
My forehead drops to his. I breathe him in, warm and real, in my arms. “I love you, Kee. I love you so fucking much.”
That sends him over; he sobs for real this time, a ragged, grateful sound that rips my chest open. He clings to me like I’m the only thing holding him to the world.
“I love you too,” he says, and the words seep into me, hot and real, soaking into the place in my chest that thought it was hollow.
That is until—
“OPEN UP THE FUCKING GATE!” Noura screams, and every head snaps to the dais.
She’s livid, clawing and struggling in Roe’s grip, while the fake Watchers—the ones clustered by the gate’s control lever—start fighting the real ones.
It’s a hard, ugly scuffle: metal on metal, curses, boots sliding on stone.
Sami jumps into the fray, ripping off a cloak and throwing himself at the faker clutching the lever.
I open my mouth to yell, take a step forward to help, but then—
The gate starts lifting.
“Oh, fuck no.” I drop into a stance like I’m falling into the only thing that makes sense. Whisper again in my right hand, the cleaver in my left, my love planted at my side. “Get ready, Kee. They’re coming.”
I ignore the stand’s scuffle and the way the crowd is turning into a pack of screaming bodies. My focus is the gate, the stinking pile of Walkers behind it, and the beast inside me that’s waking, roaring and hot. Just as the first of the Walkers slams into the newly widening gap.
A snap of Kieran’s wrist—clean, stupidly perfect—and his dagger buries itself in a skull. The thing jerks and drops.
“Atta boy,” I say, because there’s no time for anything else. “Good throw.”
“Thank you,” he breathes, cheeks flushed, eyes bright with something fierce and new.
Then fear chokes me again. The gate groans and shrieks on its hinges; the Walkers smash and shriek, crazed by the rain. Bodies pile, pushing, tearing at the bars.
“They’re breaking through!”
Just as I brace myself, one step in front of Kieran, something beautiful happens. Something unexpected.
A person drops into the Pit and comes straight at us.
Not an ordinary person, no. A Watcher, gun held high.
A shot cracks and a Walker goes down, shot clean between the eyes.
The man who fired twitches his head before grinning at us.
He’s Touched. He can stand in the rain. You can’t get infected twice.
“For our champion,” he says, nodding at me, and I can only fucking stare.
Like a fucking trigger has been pulled, more people hop into the Pit.
A couple more Watchers, bronze tags flashing.
My brothers in arms, landing like a godsdamned thunderclap around us.
The five of them move like a machine, quick, brutal, perfectly practiced, and form a semicircle around us, guns or swords raised.
Then the regulars follow. Townsfolk with whatever they had on them, knives tucked at belts, a butcher’s axe, a simple sword. All Touched. All twitching.
They’re here to help. To cut through the Walkers. To set us free.
A laugh, real and raw, tears out of me, hot and hopeful and stupid, and salt pools at the corners of my eyes. I pull Kee close and press my mouth hard to his. I kiss him like I mean to keep him.
Because I can. I can fucking keep him.
The gate snaps fully open then, and the frenzy rushes in. I shove Kee off me—his eyes as wild and hungry as mine—raise Whisper, and fucking roar until my throat cracks, because the world has handed us a flicker of hope and I’m going to take it, own it, carve it out with my hands if I have to.
We charge, shoulder to shoulder, blades out and slick with red.
And the first swing is gonna be mine.