Page 145 of Tarnished Queen

I close my eyes.

I wait.

The bang that ends my world is deafening. I feel the heat of the shot, the singe of gunpowder against my skin. And I wait for darkness to take me. For pain or a blinding light or the warm numbing sensation of death.

But there’s… nothing.

There’s nothing?

When I open my eyes, Xena isn’t in front of me anymore. She has turned away and is pointing her gun at—

“Nikolai!” His name tears out of my throat. I’m up and running towards his slumped figure before I can even worry whether Xena will shoot me, too.

What does it matter now anyway? By shooting Nikolai, she got me right in the heart.

I drop to my knees on the concrete next to him, barely feeling the pain of the stone biting into my skin because I’m too preoccupied by the puddle of sticky blood under me. It’s warm and pulsing out of him too fast.

“Soak it in, lovebirds,” Xena calls. “These are your last moments together.”

“Nikolai,” I gasp. My hands hover over his stomach, shaky and uncertain.

He’s flat on his back with his head turned towards me. His gray eyes are laser-focused on me. He grabs my hands and presses them against his wound, but I’m not sure if either of us believe it will do anything. Maybe it’s just to feel his heat one last time.

“You… you didn’t… lose…” he murmurs through lips that barely work.

I’ve never seen him like this, wounded. Incapacitated. I hate it. I can’t stand it, and it’s so overwhelming that I can’t focus on what he’s saying. “Nikolai, you—”

“Belle,” he rasps, grabbing my wrists. “Listen… listen to me. You didn’t lose the baby.”

I look up to his face. To his full lips and strong jaw. His skin is paler than I’ve ever seen it. “What did you—What? I didn’t?”

“I thought you did,” he explains haltingly. “The doctors messed—I told you that because I thought it was true. And because you said I only cared about the baby. But… I thought the baby was gone.”

That means something, but there’s too much information flying for me to cling to it. Nikolai is still talking, the words pouring out of him as fast as the blood.

“But the hospital called me right before you were taken. It was a mix-up. A clerical error. Do… do you understand?”

“Nikolai, you’re bleeding.” Tears are streaming down my face and it’s all I can think to say. What else can matter in the face of this?

He squeezes my wrists until they hurt. Until my fingers start to tingle. “You might still be pregnant. But it doesn’t matter, either way. I lied, Belle.”

I frown. “You lied about the baby? I don’t understand.”

“I lied back at the house. Before you fell down those stairs.” He lifts his head with visible effort and looks into my very soul. “I love you, Belle. I love you so much that, for the first time in my life, I was scared.”

My heart is being pulled in two different directions. It wants to crack in half at the sight of Nikolai bleeding out on the floor, but his words make it feel close to bursting.

This could be his last moment. Our last moment together. And as much as I want to hear these words from him, I don’t want it to be a lie.

I shake my head. “Don’t say it if you don’t mean it.”

“I mean it.” He pulls my bloody hand to his mouth and presses a kiss to my knuckles. “I love you, beautiful Belle. ‘Til death do us part.”

My face is wet with tears as I bend down and kiss his lips. “I love you, too, Nikolai. You can’t go. You can’t die. I just got you.”

He shakes his head. “You’ve always had me, Belle. From the start.”

I hear Xena moving closer. Her heels click across the floor. We have a minute left together. Maybe less.

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