Page 136 of The Mourning Throne
He let Lex pull him up. Let him press a kiss to his temple. Let himself rest against Lex’s chest for a moment, breathing in the scent of blood and sweat and something warm beneath it all—something that hadn’t broken.
Lex’s fingers ran through his hair. He didn’t say anything else.
Neither did Morgan.
There would be time later for words. For war. For cleanup and stitches and decisions that could never be unmade.
But for now—
Morgan closed his eyes.
He let himself be held.
Chapter 25
Time unraveled.
Morgan drifted, body caught in a loop of floating silence. Stillness. Consciousness became elastic—stretching, snapping, folding in on itself. He couldn’t track the minutes like he wanted. Couldn’t count the hours when the light changed too often. Fire red—his favorite, pale blue the next, then gone again, swallowed by the dark.
Sometimes he thought he was awake.
Sometimes he was sure he wasn’t.
Death became a thought, sometime between fog and light.
He’d never contemplatedhisdeath before. Only others. It wasn’t something that scared him.
Everyone died. Eventually. Everyone stopped breathing and bleeding. Stopped wanting. Everyone became soft and rottingunder the ground, feeding the worms and bugs. A biological conclusion. Unremarkable.
I was born with one foot already in the grave. What could be the harm?
The pull was stronger than sleep, sharper than the ragged breaths that rattled his insides. It beckoned like gravity. It would’ve been so easy to let go.
But one thing kept him from finally—finally—giving in.
Lex.
“You need to wake up,” he whispered, more than once. “Please, Morgan. I need you tocome back.”
A damp cloth dragged across his forehead. The edge of something wet pressed against his lips—water, maybe. Salty. Orange-flavored. He didn’t know if he swallowed or choked. His throat didn’t work either way.
Even the simplest requests had always been too much.
Once, he heard pacing—Lex’s footsteps, suction-soft on carpet, unsteady and frantic. Then Lex’s voice again, pitched with something Morgan had never heard.
“I don’t—no.No.Youlisten tome. Tell Gabriel to go to hell. No,Karen,I don’t have themental fucking bandwidthright now.”
The sound of a phone hitting the wall echoed inside Morgan’s body.
Later, fingers pressed against his ribs. Bandages peeled away—stickiness,pop,air. Fresh ones reapplied. The cloying, overly sweet smell of antiseptic.
“I should take you to the hospital,” Lex murmured. “I should. But I know you’ll bitch and complain and hate me, so just—just stay awake, okay? Staywith me.”
Then quieter, muffled in something:
“Please, god, stay with me.”
But his body was a mausoleum—part dead, all unmoving, full of things that should’ve stayed buried. Bones wrapped inwrong. Muscles too quiet.
