She coughed again, and her chest spasmed, but no air came. Her head lolled, and then she was in his lap, and he was stroking her hair back from her face so tenderly. “Don’t do this. Don’t. Em, you can’t.”
He sounded so far away, but that was his hand on her cheek, so he couldn't be. He was so warm and she was so cold.
“Look at me, Emmery. Open your eyes. Come on, open your eyes!”
When she managed to peel her eyelids open, Dez stared up at the sky, like he screamed at the gods as he searched amongst the flames and ruin for the bird.
He pointed at the phoenix and yelled, his voice ragged, “Stop! You’re killing her!”
The phoenix cocked its head and recognition flashed in those wicked gold eyes. And it dove, its shadowy wings tucked. The tendrils of black and gold flowed behind it like the trailing glow of a rare comet. It folded in on itself, faded back to shadow, and speared into her chest.
Her back arched and a hoarse cry ripped from her, but she fell back to the earth and sank into it. She couldn’t see past the blood. When she blinked it away, more came. Then she might have whimpered Dez’s name.
“I’m right here. I have you,” he said. The words trembled in the air. She felt them through his chest, her face pressed there. He lifted her into his arms, and under her cheek, she swore, she felt a drum. A flutter.
Something impossible.
Dez said something else, but it disappeared into the chaos around them. Fire rained down as the ceiling collapsed entirely and flame ate through brick.
She leaned into that stunted beat, trying to hold onto something, so she latched onto her new favourite sound.
The air kissed her heated skin, and she faded, but as darkness crept in, the world fell away, as it had when Dez kissed her. But this time, with permanence.
PART III
INFINITELY TIED
“Some say falling in love is slow, how a person works their way inside you, burrows under your skin, weaves themselves into your thoughts, and consumes your heart until you don’t remember yourself without them.
I can’t say the same.
I fell for her all at once. All of me became all of her in one single breath as she spoke my name.
There was nothing soft about how I fell for her. It was violent. Terrifying. It tinted everything I saw; rephrased every word I knew; reshaped the world around me.
I plummeted. But the fall changed me.
She changed me.
With true love, you don’t stop falling. You never hit the ground. But for me, I didn’t see it coming.
My bones shattered on impact, and my heart burst through my chest.
Because the day I hit the ground was the day I lost her."
The Nameless Book
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
EMMERY
Emmery was lost.
Like a mote of ash or dust, she floated in the endless darkness of the Divide. This place that had once been her solace with Shade, now owned her soul and had become her tomb.
She rubbed her hands down her numb arms, desperate to feel something. Her pain had ebbed, but only a dismal lack of … everything remained. This vacantness inside her manifested as a new horror, especially as she failed to feed air into her lungs, to touch the magic in her blood. But her body no longer belonged to her, and her heart beat like a detached, vacant thing.
Hisses sounded from the shadows as she treaded the inky waters, and whatever lurked, tracked her every step, waiting to feast on her. Time meandered and dragged, and when she grew tired and fell to her knees, she laid on the rippling ground and begged it to swallow her whole.