“Natty, please. I justcan’t.” The exhaustion that wore down on my shoulders was from so much more than just this workout session. “I can’t do something like that right now.”
“But—”
“I feel fuckingweakwithout her, okay?!” I shouted, finally rounding to face her. Tears pricked my eyes as I continued,letting loose just a little bit of what I had been swallowing and keeping buried deep within me all this time. “I can’t do that shit without my girl. What if it goes sideways? What if my mom takes Cooper’s side? What if she does that and I never see Byrd again? What the fuck am I supposed to do then?”
“Quinn.”
“I will tell her. I promise, Nat. Just not right now. Can I…” I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose and trying to get my nerves settled to where they were before, which wasn’t great or normal, but they, at least, weren’t as frazzled and raw as they were now. “Can I please get back to sparring? I need that right now, okay? It helps me.”
Nat was quiet for a moment, her blue eyes on me as if she was searching for answers to something. Then, she smirked, and I knew she was letting this go for now because she knew it was what I needed most. “If by sparring, you mean knocking Cole on his ass?”
Cole groaned. “Is this because I look like Cooper?”
I raised my eyebrows. “I mean, it wasn’t before, but now that you’ve mentioned it…”
“I can’t help how I look, and that I’m his triplet, Quinn! Simone likes my face, so can we keep it the way it looks without any rearrangement?”
I grinned widely as I took my stance on the mat with my ankles spaced out and my fists protecting my face. “Now, what happened to distracting me,primo?”
Nat laughed. “You heard our future Huntscommander! Get ready, bud!”
Cole groaned again, but he widened his stance to ground himself and brace for my next shot.
Sunset
BYRD
“You aren’t looking so good there, Byrdie-pie.”
Lilah’s voice sounded muffled through the thick fog of my mind. The clink of ice in a glass sounded louder and farther away than it should have, too. Everything was distorted and wrong. The air around me was thick and heavy, making breathing a labor I had to fight to do. The space between my thoughts was filled with static that got more chaotic and lasted longer than before. Everything inside me was slowing down: heartbeat, thought, will.
My body had stopped bothering me with urgency or priority. It just felt so useless and too heavy to hold onto. Every small effort made shadows claw at the edges of my vision. I had to ration every function. Blinking. Swallowing. Thinking. Not slipping away entirely. I had given up on feeling any sense of comfort, as even twitching a finger was a marathon where I couldn’t see the finish line. The pain felt distant now, like it belonged to someone else. Still, I clung to the feeling because it meant I was still alive. Without it, I was drifting in and out of the darkness. I had to stay afloat. Ihadto. Because every time I went under, it hurt more, and it was getting harder to resurface and stay. The reason why I needed to kick my feet toreturn was weakening faster than I was. The world was creeping toward being dull and too far away, and returning to it felt more insurmountable. It was becoming more enticing to just… stop.
Would it be so bad to just let the void have me? Wouldn’t Quinn understand?I held on as long as I could, baby, but I’m losing it all. I was losing time. How long had it been now? Did it even matter? How long did I even have left?
I wasn’t knocking on death’s door.
Death had already invited me in and was making a bed and running a bath for me upstairs.
It sounded nice, honestly. Being clean. Relaxing. A bed to lie in. Rest. An end. I’d stop hurting, stop fearing, stoptrying. Why can’t the dark just take me?
It was a fact that I couldn’t escape at this point: I was dying. Not quickly. Not cleanly. Just wearing down.
“We are losing her, Cooper. Fuck, we have only one more chance before she’s gone. Get her upnow.” Lilah still sounded faint and far, but I could still make out the pinched sharpness that wasn’t there before.
Suddenly, in the void, I felt pressure on... Some part of me. Was that my arm? Then, a sting. Had someone poked me with something? It took ages for things to come through to me. By the time it connected, I didn’t care. Nothing mattered here in the dark. Just the embrace of it.
Cold lanced its way through me. It was a nibble in my veins at first. Then, it bit my limbs.
And then?—
Fire.
Flames licked at my skin with tongues covered in a thousand needles coated in venom. My nerves were frayed, raw wires that had been hit with too much electricity. The resulting sparks were all buzz and burn, prickling numbness, and sharp stabbing. My heart lurched, going from barely beating to hummingbirdspeeds. My blood sounded like a hurricane in my ears, my fast heartbeat the thunder. Everything was tooloud. My eyes flew open, and the world exploded into color and sharpness so suddenly that tears clouded my vision before I blinked them away. Everything was toobright.I gasped like I had been drowning, my lungs fighting to pull in as much air as they could. My whole body jolted as if I were pulled by a leash around my soul. My fingers and toes curled involuntarily, my back arching away from whatever I was attached to. The room pulsed with energy, and all of the pain that had been so far away before rushed into me. The acid of the blood magic. The aching of my wounds. The exhaustion of my body trying to survive without anything to fuel it and keep it going.
It was too much. Too fast. Tooalive.
For the first time in days, most likely longer, Ifeltalive.
