Page 57 of Hellfire to Come
But for how long?
I crossed the floor and crouched beside her. She didn’t look up, but she didn’t pull away either. Her energy pulsed erratically through the bond, flickering between numbness and the low throb of something unresolved.
I reached for her hand, threading our fingers together.
“I can’t lose you,” I said softly. “And you can’t keep throwing yourself into the fire expecting me to drag you back every timewithout it killing me first. One day there won’t be anything left to pull free, Brooklyn. What will become of me then?”
Her breath hitched. Just barely.
I leaned in, my voice lower. “You don’t have to do this alone. You never did.”
“I know,” she whispered. “But I didn’t know how to let anyone else carry the burden of my kind’s sins.”
“You don’t have to allow me to carry it for you,” I murmured. “You just have to let me carry you with it.”
She finally looked at me, eyes rimmed with exhaustion but clearer than before. “I don’t know how to stop fighting, Dominic.”
“Then don’t,” I said, brushing her cheek with my thumb. “Just don’t fight alone. That is all I ask. Let me fight whatever it is with you, next to you.”
And for the first time in a long while, she didn’t argue.
The fire crackled low beside us, casting lazy shadows that danced against the far wall. The smell of herbs, sage, pine, the acrid bite of valerian, clung to the beams and to my skin. But beyond the scents, beyond the shimmer of soft embers, the land outside pressed in. Silent. Waiting.
She leaned her head against my shoulder and exhaled like the weight of all her choices might finally tip her sideways. I didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just let her be exactly where she needed to be, alive, breathing, and within arm’s reach.
A shudder went through her then. Not cold, but like a memory come to life. I recognized it for what it was: the aftermath of giving too much.
“I felt something shift,” she murmured. “When the spirits answered. I thought it would take me with it. I thought I wouldn’t come back.”
I closed my eyes and swallowed. “Then next time when we need help, we find a way that doesn’t require blood. No more sacrifices, for either of us.”
She didn’t answer. Her fingers tightened around mine instead.
“I need you whole,” I said, my voice a quiet rasp against the hush of the room. “Not just because I’m your mate. Not just because I love you. But because they’ll come for you again. For all of us. And if you keep giving away pieces of yourself every time one of us is hurt…” I swallowed, hard. “You’ll disappear before we ever make it to the end. You’ll bleed out in spirit long before they get the chance to kill you.”
She didn’t argue. She didn’t even flinch. Instead, her head shifted slightly against my chest, her fingers curling unconsciously into the folds of my shirt like she was holding onto the only thing in the world still tethering her here. I felt her breath move in small, shallow currents, each inhale threading through my ribs like a prayer she wasn’t sure she still had the right to speak.
Her voice, when it came, was barely audible. “But I didn’t push you away this time.” A pause. “At least not when it mattered.”
My throat tightened. “No,” I agreed, the word heavy in my mouth. “You didn’t.”
And it had meant everything. That she let me stay. That she hadn’t turned me into an enemy simply because I wouldn’t stand by and watch her die. That she had finally, finally trusted me enough to remain at her side while the earth itself weighed her soul in its hand.
She shifted again, and I looked down as she tilted her head back to meet my gaze. There was something in her eyes, something broken, yes, but still fiercely alive. Still burning. A kind of quiet, exhausted defiance that made my chest ache with alonging I didn’t have words for. She’d walked through hell again for someone else, and still came back with her spine unbent.
“Promise me something,” she said.
My breath caught. “Anything.”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth I regretted them. I would not, and could not promise her anything. Not when it came to her safety and life. I stayed silent though like the coward I was.
“If it comes down to it…” Her voice faltered, just for a beat. “And I have to make that choice again…you won’t stop me.”
The words lanced through me like a blade to the gut. Cold, clean, and impossibly sharp. My first instinct was to tell her no. To swear I would chain her down with my own body before I’d let her burn herself to ash again. But I didn’t lie to her. I never would.
My jaw clenched, and it took every ounce of control I had to steady my voice. “I’ll try,” I said, the words scraping raw against my throat. “But don’t ask me to let you die. Not without tearing the world apart first.”
She stared at me for a long, quiet moment, eyes darker than night, shimmering faintly in the glow from the burning stove. Then, slowly, something softened in her expression, some hard edge easing back just enough to let the humanity bleed through.
