CHAPTER 94 LYRA
LYRA
Waiting was torture. Eventually, Lyra stopped fighting the sobs that wanted to wrack her body, even though she knew that she was being photographed, that those photographs, with her hair blowing wild and tears streaming down her face, would be everywhere soon, that they’d be the kind of photographs that lived on, immortal, a snapshot of tragedy, a moment forever frozen in time.
Lyra didn’t care. All she cared about was the search and rescue team methodically clearing out rubble—to no avail.
All she cared about was Grayson.
I am ordering you, she thought, unable to stop the sobs from wracking her body, to come back to me. I am ordering you to remember that you are the kind of irritating, frustrating, maddening, mind-blowing, sure-of-himself, capable-of-anything asshole who simply cannot die.
“Lyra.” Nash’s voice broke into Lyra’s thoughts, and she realized—
In the distance, there was movement. Rescue workers were running, running in a way that could only mean one of them had found something, found someone—dead or alive, it wasn’t clear.
And then—
And then.
The rescue workers were stepping aside. Someone was making them step aside, as if by magic, and Lyra knew. The second she saw even just the outline of him, she knew.
She knew from the way he moved. She knew from the way he walked. She knew from the way he ran toward her.
Grayson.
And just like that, there wasn’t a force on earth that could have held Lyra back.
She surged forward and leapt the barricade in a way that shouldn’t have even been possible, ignoring every shout, dodging every hand that reached for her, running the way only someone who’d spent years pushing her body to its limits could.
The distance was nothing. The devastated, treacherous, unstable terrain was nothing.
Her body crashed into Grayson’s. His arms wrapped around her as hers went around him, and holding Grayson Hawthorne, being held by him, burying her head in his shoulder—
It was like stepping out of time.
Kissing Grayson Hawthorne, being kissed by Grayson Hawthorne—it was like gravity didn’t even exist, like nothing else existed, like nothing else ever had.
“Sweetheart.” Grayson’s voice—that voice, she’d thought she’d never hear his voice again—was a balm to her soul. “Lyra, sweetheart—”
“I’m here,” Lyra said. “I am right here.”
“And I,” Grayson replied, “am too stubborn to die.”
For the first time, Lyra looked past him, to a second figure. “Jameson?”
“He’s okay,” Grayson said. “The passage we were in was reinforced. It didn’t collapse. We were trapped until they dug us out, but we’re okay.” Grayson kissed Lyra again—her face, her lips. “Avery?” he asked, the question as frantic as his kisses were slow. “Is she—”
Lyra shook her head. “So far, the two of you are the only survivors.”