chapter fifty #2
Kaden lowers his head until their foreheads touch, blood-red tears streaking freely down his face and onto her cheeks.
His fingers tangle desperately in her hair as he whispers to her between shattered breaths, breathing her name like a prayer and pressing broken, pleading kisses to her lips.
Again, and again, and again… begging her to wake, begging her to come back to him.
Then his breath stutters, and he looks up at me again.
“Her—“ His voice breaks, barely more than a breath. “Her heart.”
His thumb trembles as it brushes her cheek, trailing downward along the line of her jaw, her neck, until it rests over her chest. His hand is shaking violently now.
“It’s beating.”
My brows knit together. “What?”
“Just once,” he says desperately. “It was only once… but I felt it, Brynn. I swear I did.”
Hope is a dangerous thing. I know better than to believe it.
And yet I look.
Life threads… they shimmer faintly in the air, pale blue and barely visible against the storm, stretching outward from her heart like strands of spun moonlight. They are thin and already beginning to fade, a fleeting lifeline I’ll miss if I hesitate even a second longer.
My shadows respond before conscious thought does, rising in a sudden and instinctive surge.
They curl around us in a living wall, swallowing sound and sight alike, sealing us off from the rest of the squad as they close in.
For a heartbeat, I catch Cole’s shattered gaze before I seal him out, my chest tightening with the weight of what I’m about to do.
“Do you know what Elysia is?” I ask quietly, already reaching for my braid and flipping it over my shoulder to expose the small, hidden piercing in my ear.
Kaden hesitates.
Only a second… but it’s enough to tell me he understands exactly what I’m asking.
“Yes.”
I nod once, heart pounding hard enough to make my ribs ache. “I can bring her back. But if I do…” I swallow, forcing myself to continue. “Death does not like to be undone, Kaden. If I do this, the universe will take something equally valuable from you.”
Kaden’s breath stutters. Something like fear flickers across his face, but it is fleeting, gone almost as quickly as it appeared, replaced by something far more resolute and unshakable.
“There is nothing of equal value to me.” The certainty in his voice is terrifying. “Do it.”
TO BE CONTINUED.