It was simply hers. A miniature jet-colored force of feathers and beak and shiny black eyes.
It became a speck high in the sky and then, it was gone.
Blood dripped from Rune’s claws, bathing the hot, hard ground with her essence as she stood half-naked, bloody, and proud.
She’d given birth to life, death, and freedom.
She would call it Shiv Crow.
And finally, Rune Alexander—or maybe her monster—grinned.
Chapter Thirteen
The world might have been empty but for her and Z.
They walked a high, narrow cliff path, careful not to step too far to their left and lose themselves to the miles of nothingness below.
The sun burned the top of her head and lay like strips of melting tar on her shoulders.
Neither one of them wanted to say what they were both thinking.
Their three companions were surely dead.
“They know where we’re going,” Z said. “They’ll meet us there. Blue and Naddy are both too powerful to get taken by legislators.”
“Yeah,” she said. “How much farther?”
He ran his hand over his face, gathering sweat to fling away. “A million miles, sweet thing. It might as well be a million miles.”
She didn’t ask him why.
She was pretty sure she knew.
“Are you Z?” she asked, instead. Her voice was steady. Her heartbeat was not.
“I am,” he answered, and took her hand. He laced his fingers with hers, and they walked on.
Marching toward almost certain doom.
“You should have stayed behind,” she murmured.
“If I’d stayed behind,” he replied, “I would not be Z.”
He was right.
“How’s Ellie?” he asked.
She smiled, glad he remembered. “Ellie is…” She lost her smile. “He’s changing.”
“He’d have to change. But he’s still Ellis, isn’t he?”
“Yeah.” She pushed at the bloody, raw mess that was her chest, trying to ease the pain that Ellie’s name brought. “And I hate these fucking changes.”
“Say it one more time.”
“I love you, Z.”
“A love that’s meant to be,” he said. “A love that’s different.” His breath hitched, and the rest of his words were whispered. “A love that’s necessary.”
She frowned. “You sound like you’re repeating something you heard.”
He nodded, but said nothing.
“Z,” she insisted. “What does that mean?”
He drew in a deep, shuddering breath. “You’re my purpose, Rune. You’re my reason for being. But…”
His voice held sorrow, but something more. Anger, maybe. Terror, certainly. Dejection and knowledge. Knowledge she already knew he would not fully share with her.
And she wasn’t going to push him. She didn’t want to know. Not really. It wouldn’t do any good to know.
“I love you,” she said. “No matter what.”
He smiled, but his eyes were wet.
They exited the cliff path, and Rune pulled him toward the first tree she saw. The grass was green, fragrant, and sweet, and the shade of the tree offered some relief from the boiling sun.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I want to…” she gestured, then bent forward, clutching her chest. “God, this fucking pain.”
He grabbed her to him. “I know, Rune.”
And then there were no more words, just whispers, hitched breaths, and soft moans as they forgot the horror of their situations in each other’s arms.
They loved each other.
She kissed his wounds, his scars, his tattoos.
He looked into her eyes as he pushed himself inside her, his stare so clear and pure and full of love she knew, knew without a single doubt that she had never and would never again be loved in such a way.
Never.
Her stake wounds throbbed with overwhelming pain, an overflow from the pain her heart could not contain.
The wounds from the crow she’d birthed were healing, slowly.
“One moment at a time, sweet thing,” he murmured. “We have this moment. Let’s be happy with it.”
She wrapped her arms and legs around him, holding on as tightly as she could as he moved inside her. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”
She knew her tears were running in red tracks down her cheeks. Knew her skin was dry and peeling and her hair was filthy.
She also knew that to Z, she was the most beautiful woman in all the worlds. She was his sweet thing and he saw her.
Just as she saw him.
Two perfect souls.
“You’re worth everything that ever happened to me,” he said, later. “And everything that will happen.”
They lay on their sides facing each other, neither of them ready to get up and move on.
The Flesh Shimmer waited. She was rotting. The war was raging. Damascus needed to be finished. But she put that aside because she knew with everything inside her that the time