Page 294 of Fractured Allegiance
I move until I’m right in front of her. “You didn’t just save me,” I tell her. “You painted a target on yourself.”
Her expression doesn’t change. “You think I haven’t lived with targets my whole life? The difference now is that you’re standing in front of one with me.”
I reach up, brushing my thumb along her cheek. Her skin is cool from the wind. There’s a faint scar near her jawline—a thin white line I hadn’t noticed until now. She doesn’t flinch when I trace it.
“You’re not my protector,” she says suddenly. The words are low, firm. They land between us like a verdict.
I lower my hand, searching her face. “I know, I know.”
“No,” she continues, taking a step closer until our chests almost touch. “You need to hear me. You don’t get to save me. You don’t get to decide where I stand. I chose this. I chose you. That’s what allegiance is.”
The word hangs in the air, heavy, final. I feel it in my throat, in the space where fear used to live.
“Then I’m exactly where I belong,” I say.
Something in her face softens. Not much, just enough to make her eyes shift from ice to something alive. She exhales, the tension in her shoulders loosening as she leans into me. My arms find her automatically, pulling her close, fitting her head under my chin.
The sea crashes below us again, spraying mist that cools the heat of the moment.
“We’ll have to disappear for real,” I murmur against her hair. “No contacts. No trails. Not even Elias can know where we go.”
She nods against my chest. “Good. I’m tired of being found.”
We stay like that for a while, watching the water darken and the first light break through the clouds. The sun spills over the horizon, thin and gold, painting her hair in color that makes it look almost soft.
Lydia lifts her head and studies me, her voice a whisper just loud enough to be carried away by the wind. “What now?”
“Now,” I say, “we build something no one can own.”
Her eyes search mine for a beat longer, then she presses her mouth to my throat, a brief, grounding kiss that feels more like a promise than any words we’ve ever said.
The sea keeps moving. The world keeps spinning. But up here, in this small stretch of morning light, it feels like everything finally stopped chasing us.
When we walk back inside, we leave the phone on the deck. It buzzes once, then dies completely.
Neither of us looks back.
The house feels different when we step back inside.
Not safer. Just quieter. Like something that used to stalk the corners has finally given up.
She moves first, crossing the room without a sound. She pours two fingers of whiskey into a glass and slides it across the table toward me. The gesture is automatic, unspoken — the kind of thing you do when words have been exhausted.
“To surviving,” she says.
I lift the glass, tilt it in her direction. “To burning everything we shouldn’t have touched.”
Her lips twitch — the smallest shadow of a smile. “We’re good at that.”
The drink hits hard, burning its way down like the memory of gunfire. For a long moment, neither of us speaks. The silence is heavy but not suffocating. It’s the kind that exists between people who’ve already said everything that matters.
Lydia sets her glass down and walks to the window. The sky outside is gray, thick with the kind of morning fog that blurs the line between sea and horizon. The light catches on her skin, pale against the bruises still mottling her shoulder. She looks like ruin and resurrection all at once.
“You realize,” she says, “there’s no coming back from this.”
I stand behind her, close enough to see her reflection in the glass. “There never was.”
Her gaze meets mine in the reflection. “Then what are we now?”
