Chapter 14
Chapter
Fourteen
Dax
She says it. And it’s like the floor drops out from under me.
Not loud.
Not cruel.
Just—soft.
Too soft for what it means.
Too soft for what it does to me.
She’s leaving.
She’s fucking leaving.
A month after me.
I just stood here, syrup on my fucking fingers, begging her not to leave. Pleading with my eyes like some war-shattered little boy. And the whole time, she already knew. She knew she wasn’t going to be here.
That when I come back broken and blood-soaked, there’ll be no one waiting.
No butterfly.
No warmth.
No fucking light.
I stare at her, and for the first time, I can’t see her clearly.
Just shapes. Blurs. Like my mind’s gone static.
Her lips are parted like she’s going to say more, but I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want her pretty, soft-spoken guilt. I don’t want her sad eyes and syrup-slick skin.
I want to forget I ever fucking touched her.
I want to undo everything.
Because this hurts worse than any bullet I’ve ever taken.
And I’ve taken a few.
“You knew,” I say, low.
Not a question.
An accusation.
Her shoulders flinch like I slapped her.
“I was going to tell you—”
“When?” I cut in, voice shaking. “After I kissed you goodbye? After you waved from the runway and I fucking turned to ash?”
Tension coils through me like a tripwire and suddenly, I’m back there.
Back in the sand.
Back in the blood.
Back in the endless fucking noise.
I see Malachi’s face the last time I saw him—laughing, young, stupid. And then I see what was left of him twenty minutes later.
I see smoke. Fire. Screaming.
I see the med tent and the fucking bodies piled too high.
And now her.
She wants to go there.
Into that.
Butterfly wings in a goddamn furnace.
My stomach twists.
“You think this is a game?” My voice breaks. “You think war is some beautiful cause to go fucking volunteer in?”
“I don’t—Dax, no, I—”
“You don’t get it. You don’t get it, Cass. You think I’m angry because you’re leaving? I’m not. I’m angry because you won’t come back. Not whole. Not soft. Not the same girl who kissed me under the fucking stars and made me feel like I could be a person again.”
I run a hand down my face, syrup sticking to my jaw, to my fucking soul, and I just want to rip everything off me. My skin. My past. Her.
But I can’t.
Because beneath the fury—
Is terror.
“I know what happens out there,” I whisper, and this time, it’s not rage—it’s grief. “You won’t come back with butterfly wings, Cassandra. You’ll come back with fucking shrapnel in your lungs and too many ghosts in your blood.”
She’s crying now and fuck, I hate myself for it because she doesn’t deserve my rage. She doesn’t deserve my panic but she will deserve my silence if I don’t say this now.
“I shouldn’t have touched you,” I say again, but this time—my voice cracks. “Not because I didn’t want to. But because I knew I’d fucking fall.”
She blinks, lashes wet, lips trembling.
“And now you’re going,” I finish, quieter. “And I don’t know how to do this again. I don’t know how to lose again.”
I don’t even realise I’ve backed away until my hip hits the edge of the counter.
I need to touch her.
I can’t touch her.
Because if I do, I won’t let her go.
And she’s already going.
“I won’t make it back.”
The words fall out of me like a fucking prophecy.
She shakes her head, messy and slow, like she’s refusing to hear it.
“You will, Dax. You always do—”
“No, Cassandra,” I snap, my voice like shrapnel. “You don’t understand. I don’t mean me.”
Silence.
She blinks.
And then I see it.
That second where her lips part, but nothing comes out. Where the reality of what I mean lands between us like a fucking landmine.
“I mean you.”
I breathe it like it hurts.
Like it cuts.
Because it does.
“You think I’m scared for me? I’ve made my peace with dying. I did that years ago.” My eyes drop to the syrup still slicking her skin, sticky and gold and fucking haunting. “But you—” I meet her eyes again. “You’re not built for this.”
Her mouth hardens, wounded and proud, like I just stabbed something sacred inside her. “I’m not some delicate little girl—”
“Yes, you fucking are!” My voice thunders through the kitchen. “You’re soft and good and stupidly fucking brave, and you think that’ll protect you, but it won’t.”
Her brows draw together. “I need to do this,” she whispers, but there’s fear in it now. Fear and doubt and… guilt.
“For who?” I demand. “To prove something to yourself? Or to escape?”
She flinches.
Bingo.
I press forward, not because I want to hurt her—but because I can’t lose her. Not when I’ve finally found the only goddamn light left in my life.
“You think it’s noble. You think it’ll make you feel whole. But I’m telling you, Cassandra—war doesn’t give you pieces. It fucking rips them from you.”
She slides off the table like her knees barely hold her but she stands.
“You can’t stop me,” she says quietly.
“I know.”
And that’s what kills me.
I can’t stop her.
I can’t follow her.
And I can’t protect her.
And when she leaves—there’s a chance I’ll never see her again because the world eats girls like her alive and I don’t think she’ll survive it.
Not with wings.
Not with me waiting.
Not whole.
She doesn’t say anything.
She just stands there.
Looking at me like I’m something worth saving and that’s what fucking breaks me.
“Do you know what it smells like?” I say suddenly, quietly, like the words are leaking out of the cracks in me. “When a human body burns?”
Her eyes widen—but she doesn’t look away.
“Do you know what a spinal cord sounds like when it snaps under your knee? When you have no choice but to kill or be killed?” My voice sharpens. “I do.”
I take a step closer. Not to intimidate her—no. To stop myself from falling apart.
“I’ve had my hand inside a man’s chest trying to pump his heart back to life while his eyes were already fucking gone. I’ve held a kid younger than my baby sister while he bled out screaming for his mum.”
My voice fractures.
I don’t look at her. I can’t.
“And now you wanna go play hero?” I drag my hand down my face. “You think you’re gonna be different? That war’s gonna spare you because you’ve got a pretty fucking smile and you mean well?”
Silence.
I laugh. Bitter. Broken.
“No one’s coming out of this whole, Cassandra. Not you. Not me. No one.”
I turn, walking toward the sink like I can rinse the blood off my fucking memories. I grip the edge of the counter so hard my knuckles go white.
“You think I’m angry at you?” My voice drops to a rasp. “I’m not.”
Another breath. Shaky. Controlled.
“I’m angry at me. For letting you in. For letting myself believe for one second that I could have something soft in a world that only deals in sharp edges and exit wounds.”
Her footsteps are quiet.
She’s behind me but I can’t turn around because if I see her face—if I see even an ounce of forgiveness—I’ll break.
“I watched a man shoot his best friend because he was infected and there were no medics left. That’s what you’re walking into. That’s what I walked out of.”
Another silence.
And then I snap.
I spin around and slam my fist into the cupboard door. It splinters.
“Fuck!”
She gasps—but doesn’t move.
Just stares at me like she wants to hold me together and I don’t deserve it.
“I can’t lose you too,” I snarl. “I won’t.”
I’m heaving now. Rage boiling under my skin like napalm. My voice shakes from the sheer pressure of trying to hold it all in.
“Twenty Six days,” I breathe. “Twenty Six days and I have to go back to hell. And now I get to count down every single one knowing you’re running toward the fucking fire.”
She opens her mouth.
I stop her with one word:
“Don’t.”
I’m shaking.
Unraveling.
I’ve never felt this much and wanted it gone so bad because if I love her—I lose her.
That’s what war is.
It takes everything soft and makes it bleed.
“I’m not scared of war,” she says softly.
I flinch.
Not because of the words because of the conviction in them.
She doesn’t understand.
She doesn’t fucking get it.
“Then you’ve never seen it.”
I turn back around, but it’s not anger now. It’s not even grief.
It’s terror.
“I’m not scared of dying, Dax,” she says.
I walk toward her. Slowly. Like I’m walking through a graveyard of my own choices.
“I’m not scared of dying either,” I whisper. “But I’m fucking terrified of losing you.”
Her eyes water, and she looks away, but I grip her chin gently and force her to look at me.
“You think I can watch you walk into that and just breathe through it?”
She’s trembling.
So am I.
“I can’t even sleep without hearing the sound of bones snapping. I can’t take a hot shower without smelling burning flesh. You want that?” I whisper. “You think your fucking heart can survive that?”
“Then why do you get to go?” Her voice cracks.
“Because I’m already dead,” I rasp.
Her mouth parts.
I step closer.
“Every part of me that mattered died the first time I held a dying boy’s hand and told him I’d get him home.”
I reach up, press my hand to her chest.
“This?” I whisper. “This still beats. This still feels. You think it’s fair to offer that up to a war that’ll chew you up and spit you back in pieces?”
Her eyes close, and I feel her breathing stagger under my palm.
“I didn’t ask for this,” I murmur. “I didn’t ask for you to come into my life and start fixing things I didn’t know were broken. I didn’t ask to feel again.”
“But you did,” she whispers. “You felt me.”
I nod.
Once.
Twice.
Then I drop to my knees in front of her like she’s my altar and I’m the fucking sinner begging for grace.
“I feel you in my fucking bones, butterfly.”
Her hands cradle my face.
I let her.
For a second.
Just a second because the next words cut me wide open.
“I’m going anyway,” she whispers. “Because if I can stop even one man from dying alone, I’ll never regret it.”
Tears hit my cheeks.
Not mine.
Hers but she doesn’t let go of me.
Not when I press my face to her stomach.
Not when my shoulders shake like I’m bleeding from somewhere no medic can touch.
Not when I say, “You’ll come back to me.”
She says nothing because we both know she can’t promise that.
She doesn’t answer.
Of course she doesn’t.
What the fuck could she say?
We both know there’s no promise in war.
No guarantees.
No mercy.
Just dust and bones and empty spaces where the living used to be.
I press my forehead harder against her, arms wrapped around her waist like I’m bracing for the blast. Like if I hold her tight enough, I can keep the world from ripping her out of my hands.
But time is already ticking.
And I can hear it in my chest.
Loud. Merciless. Unstoppable.
“Why does it have to be you?” I whisper.
She runs her fingers through my hair like I’m something breakable. Like she’s already mourning me. Like we’re already ghosts of each other.
“Because someone has to go,” she says quietly. “And I can’t sit here while people bleed and pretend I don’t care.”
“But you’ll leave me bleeding instead?” I choke, voice cracking like bone.
Her breath hitches.
She tries to pull away.
I hold on tighter.
“Don’t,” I grit. “Just… don’t.”
“I don’t want to lose you either, Dax.”
“Then don’t fucking leave me.”
I don’t yell.
I don’t raise my voice.
I just say it like a man standing on the edge of something he’s not sure he’ll survive.
“Please,” I whisper, and I hate how that sounds coming from me. But I mean it.
God, I fucking mean it.
But all she does is press her lips to my forehead and close her eyes like she’s praying. And I know what that means. I know a farewell when I feel it in my skin.
I rise slowly.
Like my body doesn’t want to obey.
Like walking away from her might tear me in two.
She looks so small now.
So soft.
So fucking brave it makes me want to scream.
She opens her mouth but I shake my head.
“Don’t,” I breathe. “If you say anything right now, I won’t be able to walk away.”
Her lips tremble but she stays silent.
My fingers reach out on instinct, brushing her cheek like I’m trying to memorise the texture of her.
The feel of home.
I swallow hard, jaw clenched so tight it aches.
I step back.
One step.
Two.
I let the pain crawl up my throat like fire.
And then I say it.
Low.
Gravel-rough.
Breaking me with every syllable.
“Goodbye, butterfly.”
I walk out before I can change my mind.
Before I fall apart in her arms again.
Before I beg her to stay because I know she won’t and that’s the part that kills me most.