Page 82 of The Shadow King's Brother

A thread stretched too thin. One hard tug and it’ll snap.

Panic grips me like a vise, squeezing the air from my lungs.

The last three days crash over me all at once. The heat. The cold. The blood. The guilt.

I’m so fucking tired. So weak now. Is this what it feels like for her?

To be trapped between life and death, hovering?

Moments after, Gio bursts into the hallway, gun raised. He looks exhausted, the shadows under his eyes nearly as dark as night. His eyes land on me, then Nica, and something shifts in his expression – the hardness faltering for just a second.

“There’s an ambulance here, and police,” he says, but the words sound distant, muffled like they’re coming from another world.

I barely hear him. My hands tremble as I stroke Nica’s cheek, desperate to feel some sign of life.

“Don’t fucking leave me,” I whisper, my voice breaking as the salt of the words taste bitter on my tongue. “You’re the only fucking light in my life.”

Her eyelids flutter—a slight tremor, but enough to send a desperate hope surging through me. Her black lashes rest heavily against her cheek.

“Yes, Nica, stay with me,” I rasp.

She tries to speak, her lips forming words, but nothing comes out – just a faint stirring of air.

I shake my head, the world starting to spin. “You’re gonna stay, just stay. Save your strength.”

Her lashes flutter.

A single tear slips from the corner of her mouth, tracking down her cheek.

“It’s… too late,” she breathes, voice barely more than a ghost. “Elio… I—”

Then her body goes still. Too still.

Her breath hitches, then falters. Her heartbeat, once faint, begins to vanish beneath my hands.

I snap.

A scream tears from my throat, raw and primal, shattering whatever control I had left. My fist slams into the concrete, pain ricocheting up my arm, igniting the fire already burning in my shoulder—but I don’t care. I want it to hurt. I need it to hurt.

Cement crumbles beneath my knuckles.

I throw my head back and roar—to the ceiling, to the universe, to whatever cruel fucking force decided this was justice.

“Noooooo!”

The sirens are deafening now, crashing into the moment like a wave of false hope. They’re close. But not close enough.

Gio kneels beside me, his voice hushed, apologetic. “Celeste and Maria… they’re safe. Elio, listen—Nica will be okay. Let the paramedics help her. You need to let her go—”

I don’t hear him.

Can’t.

My world is unraveling.

My whole soul crumbling into ash in my chest.

I hold her tighter. Her skin is so cold.

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