Page 79 of Incubus

55

Roth

I HELDher in my arms, not caring that I would soon be trapped in this stone crypt. Her life was ebbing away as her eyes fluttered and she tried to focus on me.

I stroked her hair and murmured words of comfort, though I knew she wasn’t afraid. Not even death could break her.

Lilah reached up a trembling hand to stroke my face. I clasped it in mine and kissed it gently, already feeling the cold settling in her delicate fingers.

“I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for.” I looked once more into her blue-gray eyes. She had set out to betray me, to end me, but she had done neither. She had saved me.

I rocked her, unable to speak any more words to assuage her pain or my own torment.

I had only moments before she was gone forever, lost to the ferryman and what lay beyond. My heart chilled around the edges, ice spreading inward, and the incubus wailed with abject grief.

“Kiss me.” Her breaths began to sputter.

I leaned down, cradling her like a precious babe, and lightly brushed her lips with my own. When I leaned back once more, she was gone. Her eyes were closed and an angelic look rested on her beautiful face.

I clutched her limp body to me and roared with fury, shaking even more stone from the crumbling ceiling.

Grief washed over me as if I were sinking into a bottomless ocean of sadness from which I’d never rise.

I rubbed her pale cheek, only then noticing the wetness on them. They weren’t her tears, but my own. The first I’d ever shed.

A chunk of ceiling shattered next to me, but I simply adjusted Lilah in my lap, held her close, and waited for the end to come.

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