Chapter 4
The joy hit me like a rising tide, swallowing every rational thought I had left. I clung to him, pressing my ear against his chest, feeling the solid warmth of his body and the steady thrum of his heartbeat beneath my cheek.
The nightmare was over. We'd beaten that goddamn fate.
He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me closer.
I was so lost in the moment that I didn't notice anything wrong.
Not until his arms started to tighten.
It wasn't a loving embrace anymore. It was a cage. His arms clamped down like iron bands, squeezing tighter and tighter until a dull ache spread through my ribs.
I couldn't breathe. I tried to pull back on instinct, but he had me locked against his chest, and I couldn't move an inch.
I called his name, my voice thin and strained from the pressure. "Nathan?"
He didn't answer.
His chin rested on my shoulder, and his breath came hot against my ear, sending a faint shiver across my skin. But the words that left his mouth froze every drop of blood in my veins.
He spoke in a voice so quiet and flat it barely sounded human, as if he were reading a fact off a page that had nothing to do with either of us.
"You know, Vera? The gate to Eden only opens one way. You have to sacrifice the purest soul to unlock it."
My mind went blank.
I muttered, "What are you saying?" My heart hammered against my ribs, pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears.
Before he could answer, a sharp, blinding pain exploded through my chest.
It wasn't the burning blast of a bullet. It was something colder, something pure and absolute, like an ice pick driven into my heart by a steady, deliberate hand.
The air left my lungs in an instant.
Every ounce of strength drained from my body through that single wound, and my legs gave out beneath me. The only thing keeping me upright was his arm locked around me.
Time slowed to a crawl.
I forced my head down, inch by inch.
A familiar gleam of cold metal protruded from my chest. A single drop of blood gathered at the tip of the blade, then fell and bloomed into a dark stain on the sand below.
It was his dagger. The one I polished every day, the one I knew by every nick and scratch on its surface.
And the hand gripping the hilt belonged to the person I loved and trusted most in this world.
Why?
The question detonated inside my skull like a bomb, and a tidal wave of disbelief and betrayal crashed over me, swallowing me whole.
I lifted my head, desperate to see his face, to find some answer in his eyes.
But I couldn't see anything. The world was draining of color, fading into a gray, shapeless blur. The only sound left was my own heart, stuttering through its final, ragged beats.
In the last second before everything went dark, I felt him let go.
My body dropped like a broken puppet, crumpling into the sand. And the sand, warm again, rose up to meet me.
*****
I would never forget how it felt to die.
I jolted upright in my sleeping bag, and the phantom wound in my chest was so real that I reached for it on instinct. There was nothing there. My skin was smooth and warm, and my heart beat steadily behind my ribs.
But I could still feel it. The cold bite of metal, tearing through flesh, clung to me like venom, coiled around something deeper than bone.