Page 261 of Onyx Cage: Volume II
“We did it together, just like we said we would.” She sounded close to pleading now, desperate and so endlessly broken that it threatened to fracture another piece of my chest. “We took that impossible chance, and even with all of the odds stacked against us, we won.”
Tears splashed on my skin, each one burning like another drop of acid. Then she audibly swallowed, shifting farther away from me.
“And it doesnotend like this.” The desperation from a moment ago had been replaced by pure steel, a low growl of unrelenting resolve. “So wake up,” she ordered. “Wake up and smirk at me and call me Lemmikki.”
And I tried. I fought harder than I had ever fought for anything in my life to obey, especially when her silence fell like the volley of a thousand arrows, each one piercing my flesh.
Keep talking, Lemmikki. This isn’t over yet. I swear it on my life, and on yours.
Instead, I felt the weight of her head on my shoulder, a river of tears flowing freely from the rupture in her soul. Sobs replaced her silence, each hitching breath spurring me onward.
Every time, her tears were my undoing, but this time I would use them to stoke the flames of the fragments of energy I had left.
I could wake up. I would, before she lost herself entirely to her own darkness.
Her breathing slowed to a lull, but still, I fought. I focused on each muscle in my body, clawing my way back to her, one stilted heartbeat at a time. With everything I had, I willed my lips to speak, my eyes to open.
Wake up and smirk at me and call me Lemmikki.
I never had been able to deny her anything.
I didn’t know how much time had passed before I saw it again, filtered hazy light resting on a cloud of crimson curls. This time, the vision stayed longer, giving me several seconds to examine the tearstained, shattered face of my sleeping wife.
It wasn’t enough.
When my eyelids closed again, I refused to let them stay that way. Over and over, I forced them open until consciousness fully settled in.
Pain rode heavy on its heels, but I didn’t care about anything that wasn’t the woman lying at my side, too quiet and too still and too small for all that she had done.
“Lemmikki.” The first time I said the word, it was barely above a whisper.
She didn’t stir, so I tried again, gaining more volume that time. That time she squeezed her eyes shut, like the sound was haunting her. She gripped my hand tighter in hers.
“Lemmikki, wake up,” I prodded her gently.
She let out another sob, shaking her head the barest fraction back and forth. I took the deepest breath I could manage against the searing agony in my chest and gripped her hand tighter in mine.
She froze for half a heartbeat before she finally opened her eyes, tilting her head up until they met mine.
She was so ashen, like the same blade that had carved into my chest had sliced into hers as well, draining her of every bit of life as surely as the blood had poured from my wound.
Her lips parted, a disbelieved huff of air escaping her in the single breath before her lips were on mine. Tears spilled out of her eyes as she alternated between sobs and kisses pressed against my skin.
Not through breaking, even now.
I thought again about when I had left her at that inn, then when I found her broken in her old bed. I had been so stupid. So convinced that she was strong enough to handle the weight of the world, to handle the same loss I couldn’t fathom facing on the other end.
Whatever force in the world had soldered our souls together was as inevitable as we were.
“I love you,” she breathed. “With every last broken piece of my soul, and when it’s whole, and everything in between.”
I strengthened my grip on her hand, the only way I could remind her that I was still physically here.
“I love you, too, Lemmikki.” I told her, my voice hoarse with the pain of seeing her this way. “Always.”
She lost herself to another wave of tears, burying her face in my shoulder with the weight of the grief that was slowly ebbing off of her. Finally, she took another shuddering breath, rolling to a seated position.
Her eyes flashed with uncertainty as she gently eased off the bed, like I would disappear the moment her back was turned.On hurried footsteps, she rushed to the door of the room we were staying in—which I noted, with relief, was not the same one we had been in last time we were in this palace, just before everything went to hell.