50. Isolde
CHAPTER FIFTY
ISOLDE
“ I solde.”
Bastian’s voice floated to Isolde as if through a fog. Wherever she was, she wasn’t sure her body was there with her. She could feel nothing. Nothing at all.
“Isolde, open your eyes.”
His face swam into focus before her, limned in silvery moonlight. They lay together on a slab of cold stone, snowflakes drifting silently down around them. Though Isolde couldn’t feel it, she saw her hand reach out, trembling and coated in blood, and caress the sharp angle of Bastian’s jaw.
“I love you,” he whispered.
Isolde couldn’t speak. There were things she wanted to say, but she couldn’t make her lips form the words.
“I told you once that my mortal life was too short not to spend the rest of it loving you.” Bastian lifted his hand and drew hers from the side of his face, tangling their fingers together between them.
That , she could feel—the heat of his fingers against hers, like warming her hands over a fire on a frigid night.
“If the dawn comes, and we don’t rise with it, know that I meant it.
Know that I loved you. For every second of the time we had, down to the very last, I did. ”
Isolde tightened her fingers around Bastian’s, hoping he understood everything she didn’t have the strength to say. Hoping he saw the love in her eyes, soul-deep and heartrending and eternal.
The moon had turned to silver once more.
It sunk in the sky, inching toward the western horizon as slowly as the failing beat of Isolde’s heart.
She could see nothing else but Bastian’s face.
His eyes, soft and steady as he held her gaze.
All she could feel was his hand in hers like a lifeline, like the only spark of warmth left in the whole world.
Isolde and Bastian lay in a pool of their spilled blood with their hands joined, clinging to each other as desperately as they clung to life, and waited for dawn.