He caught my face in his calloused, trembling hands and pressed a soft, gentle kiss to my lips, silencing my panic in one breath-stealing, heart-shattering moment.
“Don’t,” he whispered, his forehead resting against mine as his thumbs caught the tears sliding down my cheeks. His voice was raw, cracked open and unafraid. “You opened my eyes, Brexlyn. You made me see this place for what it is. I’ve been living in this… poisonous privilege, so used to the blood under my feet I stopped noticing the bodies it came from. Watching Praxis take and take. Lives, freedom, futures, and give only what keeps us docile. And I told myself it didn’t matter. That it wasn’t my problem.”
His eyes locked on mine, blazing with a clarity I’d never seen in him before. “Until you. You woke me up from the bullshit I was sleepwalking through. You gave me something to fight for. Someone to love.” His voice broke, and he swallowed hard.
“I am so sorry Zaffir,” I cried, pressing my fingers to his bruised flesh, feeling like each of his injuries were my own.
He shook his head, cupping my face. “No, no, hey, listen. I’d take a million nights like last night if it meant protecting you. Loving you. I’d burn this whole goddamned regime to ash if it meant you’d be safe. We might just need to be a little more careful for a while.”
I let out a sound that was half sob, half laugh, because somehow, even broken and battered, he was still the recklessidiot I’d fallen for. Tears fell from both of us now, blurring the world into something unbearable and beautiful.
“They’ll hurt you again,” I whispered, my voice trembling, my hands clinging to his. “We shouldn’t… I can’t let them keep hurting you because of me.”
And then, from behind us, a voice broke the fragile, bleeding silence.
“Then why don’t we take them down?” Thorne whispered.
It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t shouted.
It didn’t need to be.
Because in those four words was a crack of lightning splitting a storm-black sky.
Zaffir and I both turned to face Thorne, stunned.
Thorne stood there like a tempest barely restrained, his jaw tight, eyes fierce and unflinching. The weight of centuries of Praxis control, of blood-soaked loyalties and inherited chains, cracked and crumbled in that moment beneath the quiet, devastating force of his defiance.
“You’re saying…” My voice was a rasp, the words caught between disbelief and fragile, desperate hope.
Thorne met his gaze, unshaken. “I’m saying maybe it’s time we stopped fightingforPraxis” His hand flexed at his side, a storm gathering behind his eyes. “And started fighting against them.”
