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“Alena.” My throat is so dry that my words sound scraped over sandpaper.
In a flash, Alena slides into my lap and settles as a warm, familiar weight over my thighs. She cups my face, and in a blink, the tears come.
“I’m here,” she says softly. “I’m right here. You’re safe now, I promise.”
The few tears I can spare roll slowly down my cheeks. I throw my arms around her body and pull her in for the strongest hug I can muster right now. As her body presses against mine, her soft lips collide with my own and my heart skips another beat. She tastes like peaches.
She slides one hand into my unkempt hair, and my head sags forward onto her shoulder, nuzzling into her warmth as she holds me. She’s here. She’s really here. She got away from Mara and she came to save me, which is…
Which is…
Wait. Something is different.
Something is wrong.
I lean back, and the kiss breaks. Then my eyes drop to Alena’s perfectly flat stomach. My heart punches up into my throat as a different sickly chill works its way down my spine.
“Alena?”
“Yes, baby?”
“What happened to our baby?”
Alena hushes me with a soft sound in the back of her throat, then she leans in for another kiss. Despite the alluring press of her lips, I can’t focus on anything other than the lack of a baby bump. Has it been too long? Has she had our baby already?
“Alena.” I turn my head away, blinking away my tears. “What happened?”
“No, Kristof,” Alena whispers. “Don’t press it.”
“Alena—”
Suddenly, to my horror, Alena starts to convulse in my arms. Her warm hands on my shoulders turn to shards of ice with her sharp fingernails cutting into my flesh. Her eyes flood with tears, and when she opens her mouth to scream, nothing but blood pours past her lips. She chokes, drowning in her own blood.
“Alena! Alena, fuck, what do I do? What happened?”
Rolling us over, I place Alena on her back and cup her chin, moving as fast as my weakened limbs will let me. There’s so much blood, but it’s cold to the touch.
“You,” Alena sobs on the ground, clutching at me and reigniting the fire of pain in my chest. “You killed her. You killed our baby, Kristof. Why! Why couldn’t you just be decent for once? You killed her—you killed me! You killed us, Kristof, you killed us!”
She convulses violently, and a mouthful of cold blood splashes over my face.
In a blink, Alena is gone, and I gasp brokenly into the puddle I’ve rolled into during my hallucination.
Not real.
Alena isn’t here.
Not real.
Fuck.
I close my eyes, not that it makes a difference. I don’t have the strength to roll out of the puddle, nor the strength to drink it. All I can do is lie here as my stump throbs in time to my sluggish heartbeat.
I’m dying.
I know that now.
My stump is badly wrapped and received the bare minimum in medical care—Mara cauterized the wound with searing metal and left it at that. Infection set in quickly, and now death comes for me.
