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The mist had dampened her hair, making it slightly darker. More of the mist gathered as drops along her lashes. Or maybe they were tears like the ones that wet her cheeks. She was so painfully beautiful, even with a bandage wrapped around her head.
“Love… you…” He got to say it for the second time. She deserved to hear it more, but twice would have to do. He struggled to keep his eyes from closing, wanting to see the apparition as long as he could.
“I love you, too, Luka,” she said, her voice cracking. Her second hand shifted to clasp the other side of his, sending more stabbing pain into his body. The second hand was strangely lumpy. He gasped in another rattling breath at the flare her touch sent through his body.
“I’m sorry. My touch is hurting you, isn’t it? I should let go.”
He’d lost the air to protest, but she didn’t pull away. He didn’t feel stabbing along the place where the outside of one of her hands grazed, and it was enough to make him blink at her splinted finger.
Why would an apparition need a splint?
And why did it hurt so much to imagine her there, touching him? Did his mind hate him that much?
Alina glanced over her shoulder toward the wall, which had crumbled into debris. Her eyes were fearful when she looked back at him, but then they narrowed and she released him.
His fingers closed as if they could reach for her.
“Sorry, this will hurt even worse,” she murmured, moving behind him. Then she wrapped her arms around his middle, right over his bandaged chest. Even through the cloth between them it burned, and that was before she dragged him back a few inches. The grip over his broken ribs was firm as she grunted before dragging him again.
His breath burst out of him as pain spread everywhere the numbness had been moments before. The numbness had been a blessing after all. His consciousness fluttered as the pain rushed to his head, causing everything around them to blur.
“Stop,” he begged.
Alina paused, her arms shaking against the underside of his. Soft sobs she didn’t try to contain soon filtered into his ears, where her chin rested against his shoulder.
She felt so very real, and he started to believe.
“I have to,” she said between the sobs, and she pulled his body with her.
Luka was not new to pain. He gritted his teeth as he tried to endure it. Only one of his legs was broken. He should hobble to help her.
“Alina!” he gasped.
She paused. Her wet cheeks pressed against the side of his face.
Luka’s hands found hers where they remained, wound tight around him. He brushed over her skin, feeling the warm tingle instead of pain. His hand followed her arm, covered in the black cotton of one of his shirts, up to her shoulder, and then he rested it against her damp cheek, pressing their faces closer as he tilted his head to rub against hers. The tingles chased some of the pain to the corners of his awareness.
“Y-you’re… alive…” He gasped. She felt very, very warm.
A chuckle entered the rubble from the direction of the collapsed wall. “My gift to you,” Ivankov said.
Luka stared at the man who had been the center of his life for as long as he could remember.
Ivankov’s smile spread a little too wide, as if it didn’t fit among his features. He’d always appeared most terrifying when he smiled just like that.
“It wasn’t a gift,” Alina said. “It was luck.”
Ivankov didn’t spare her a glance. “Won’t you thank me, Luka?” he asked.
Luka had heard those words before. They were a demand, not a request. He tried to gather enough saliva to force the words out.
“Did you do this to Luka?” Alina shouted.
She pulled her body away from his, and panic slid through him. He’d heard Alina speak more than anyone he could remember. He was familiar with the different cadences her voice took on: rapid in her excitement, hesitant in her shyness, choked in her grief, and then the pleasant hum when she spoke every thought in her head. Both times she’d stabbed her attackers, she’d been silent, so he’d never heard it quite like this. No longer shouting, but lower in volume, with a quiver of a growl.
“I’m going to kill you.” She stared straight at Ivankov as she said the words.
And Luka realized he could still be afraid after all.
