ALTHEA
Nothing thrummed against my fingers when I pressed where his pulse should have been. My stomach dropped, his head in my lap growing heavier with every passing second—like dead weight.
No. No. No.
I would not be accepting death from him. Even as everything in my body ached, I shook his too-wide shoulders. Desperation gnawed at me, something in my chest shriveling up and dying alongside him.
"Thorne…"
My words came out sluggish; my tongue weighed far too much. My vision began to double for the hundredth time since I had managed to wake up. Around me were bodies, blood, and shattered glass. And in my head, there was a silence so absolute that I wanted to scream until my lungs burst. I couldn't feel Zyra in her familiar corner of my mind. The silence pressed into me like an anvil dropped from a great height. I shook his limp body again, but he remained unresponsive even as I slowly fought to collect my words.
