AMAIA

  A HAND SHOOK HER SHOULDER. Soft at first, then firmer, insistent.

  Amaia blinked awake, the world a blur of shadow and pale lamp-glow. Ioana hovered over her, tense, mouth pressed tight.

  “What is it?” Amaia murmured, voice husky with sleep. “It’s still dark…”

  “We have to go.” Ioana’s words came quick, clipped. “Now—”

  The door burst open.

  And he was there.

  Yanick.

  For a moment, she thought she was still dreaming. Or maybe the strings had pulled him back across her path, a puppet sent to remind her.

  But no. He filled the doorway, tall, gaunt, his cloak streaked with mud and ash, his face harder than she remembered. Wilder. Shadows clung to him like old sins.

  He didn’t move. Neither did she.

  The air between them stretched taut, a wire humming with all the words they hadn’t spoken.

  “Get her ready,” he said, low and urgent, his voice rough with exhaustion and something else she couldn’t name.

  Ioana froze beside the bed. “What’s happening—”

  “Later.” His gaze never left Amaia. “We’re leaving.”

  Amaia pushed herself upright, slow, unsteady. Her hands curved instinctively over her belly, fingers splayed protectively across the swell. Her heart hammered beneath her ribs like a trapped bird.

  “You’re alive.”

  The words slipped out, trembling, fragile, as though saying them aloud might shatter the moment.

  A breath. A tired quirk of his lips, not quite a smile.

  “Looks that way.”

  She stared. Mud smeared his boots, ash streaked his cloak, his eyes hollow and ringed with sleepless dark. And something inside her twisted sharp and deep. Guilt, relief, longing. She couldn’t untangle it, couldn’t tell where one ended and the next began.

  He stepped closer. She shrank back against the pillow, her hand tightening over her stomach, a shield she hadn’t meant to raise. His eyes were different. Harder. As if something inside had cracked and never quite healed.

  But then his gaze dropped—and stopped.

  Stopped on her belly.

  He went still. A frown tugged between his brows, uncertain, raw.

  “Is that..?”

  Her chin lifted, heat rising in her cheeks.

  “Yours.”

  A flicker of something flashed across his face—shock, disbelief, a flickering hope quickly snuffed.

  “You’re sure.” It wasn’t quite a question.

  A bitter laugh bubbled up in her throat, sharp enough to cut.

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  Yanick blinked, swallowed hard, like the words landed somewhere he hadn’t braced for. His hand lifted, half reaching, then hesitating midair.

  “Amaia…”

  She forced herself to look away. It was too much. All of it. Him standing there, alive, looking at her like that. She hadn’t prepared for this part. Hadn’t rehearsed this scene in her mind.

  “I thought you’d hate me,” she murmured.

  A breath. Rough, bitter.

  “Maybe I do.”

  He stepped forward again and this time, she let him come. Close enough that she could smell the night on him: smoke, damp stone, blood. Close enough that his hand lifted, reaching for hers.

  But it wasn’t his dominant hand.

  It was his left.

  “Come on.” His voice softened, gentled by something she couldn’t name. But the urgency threaded beneath it, tight and strained. “Can you stand?”

  She hesitated. Then slid her hand into his.

  His fingers closed around hers, warm, rough-skinned but she felt the subtle tremor there, the weakness beneath the grip. His other hand twitched uselessly, a faint grimace tightening his jaw as he shifted his balance.

  He pulled. Slow, cautious, careful as though he feared he might drop her. His arm slid beneath hers, bracing her against his side, steady despite the unsteadiness in his own body.

  Amaia rose, slowly, her weight awkward, unfamiliar. Six months changed everything. Her centre of gravity tipped forward; she felt it in her hips, her back, the strain across her belly. But his strength held. Barely.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  He inhaled sharply when her weight pressed against him. She felt the small shudder of pain ripple through him. Felt the effort beneath his steadiness.

  For a heartbeat, she leaned into him, felt his ribs expand with shallow breath beneath the layers of damp cloth. Her head brushed his shoulder, and something inside her squeezed tight, aching.

  For a moment, she let it happen. Let him carry that piece of her.

  But even as she stood, she felt it: the tug. The invisible strings winding around her wrists, her ankles, her throat. The quiet pull of hands she couldn’t see, guiding her steps toward him, away from him, tightening their grip with every choice she thought was hers.

  A puppet never cuts her own cords.

  “Where are we going?” she asked softly.

  “Out,” Yanick murmured, jaw tightening, muscle flickering beneath stubble. “We’re leaving this place.”

  Beyond the thick stone walls, the faint wail of horns curled through the fading night. Low, haunting, a sound that prickled the skin. Another day of the madness. Of fear.

  “You’re hurt?” Her gaze flicked to his right wrist, the slight swelling, the way he cradled it close to his ribs, fingers curling unconsciously as though afraid to use it. “What’s wrong with your hand?”

  “Later.” His voice roughened, a scrape of grit. He turned, wincing as he tossed a bundle toward Ioana with his left hand. “Pack what you can.”

  Ioana caught it and was already moving, swift and silent.

  But Amaia couldn’t move. Couldn’t stop staring. Couldn’t stop drinking him in like a woman waking from a long, cruel dream, terrified that if she blinked, he’d vanish again.

  “Come on,” Yanick urged, his voice rough with fatigue, with something sharper beneath. “We need to move.”

  Amaia shook her head, staring at him like he’d lost his mind.

  “Move where?” Her words came out hoarse. “The city’s under siege, Yanick. There’s nowhere to go.”

  Outside, the muffled sound of horns carried through the night. Somewhere distant, a crash, the faint shudder of stone. The air in the chamber felt brittle, like it might shatter under the weight of the last weeks—the smoke, the screams, the endless nights of sirens and ash and prayers. Prayers to her unborn baby.

  Yanick’s jaw clenched.

  “We can’t stay here.”

  She swallowed hard.

  “Then where?”

  “There’s a way.”

  It was Ioana who spoke, quiet but sure, stepping forward from the shadows. Her eyes were steady, her hands already tightening straps on her satchel.

  Amaia’s chest tightened.

  “A way out?”

  Ioana gave a single nod.

  “But we have to leave. Now. Before the day breaks in.”

  Amaia’s pulse quickened. Her gaze flicked once more to Yanick. The grim set of his mouth, the shadows carved deep beneath his eyes, the crooked slant of his stance, his right hand hanging close to his side, fingers curled against phantom aches.

  She didn’t know how he was still standing. Didn’t know how any of them were.

  “I don’t—” she started, but Ioana was already moving, already pulling the door open to a corridor dimly lit by dying lanterns, their glow wavering like breath.

  Yanick stepped beside her, his hand brushing the small of her back, cautious, protective. The touch made her ache. Made her feel the strings again, winding tighter, drawing her forward even as some part of her wanted to stay, to sink back into the dark.

  She let herself be guided, like a puppet she was recently.

  And then a figure stepped from the shadows.

  Amaia stopped dead.

  Her throat closed.

  Father.

  He hadn’t aged, no. He’d only hardened even more. His hair was streaked with more grey now, his face leaner, sharper, cut from stone. And his eyes, those cold, calculating eyes, were exactly as she remembered.

  “I—” The word rasped out, barely a breath. “You’re… alive.”

  He didn’t smile. Didn’t open his arms. Didn’t even move closer.

  He just looked at her. Cool. Measuring. Until his gaze dropped. Slow, deliberate, to the swell of her belly beneath the cloak.

  Something flickered there, in his expression. Not softness. Not recognition. Something colder.

  Fear.

  It cleaved through her like a blade.

  A heartbeat passed and his gaze lifted again, unreadable, pale as winter light, unreadable as ever.

  “We’re leaving,” he said flatly. And turned away.

  No embrace. No apology. No word to close the years between them.

  Only the sound of his footsteps, already fading into the dark.

  Amaia stood frozen, heart clenched in a tangle of invisible strings, pulled tight, pulled in every direction.

  Yanick and Nemeth. Standing in the same space. Breathing the same air. It didn’t make sense.

  They hunted him. She remembered the whispers around the fire, the cold gleam in Rayla’s eye, the name spat like poison: Nemeth, the monster. The man whose death would buy them peace. And yet here they were. Together.

  Yanick, who’d sworn to stop him. Nemeth, who’d vanished the night the farm burned, who’d left her behind when the hoof beats thundered up the hill, when the torches lit the sky.

  He’d fled. He’d left her.

  And now he turned his back on her again, without even a word of why.

  Her breath trembled. She didn’t know if she wanted to run to him or away from him, to scream or to fall silent. Her body felt hollow, filled only with echoes and questions and the ache of all the answers she would never get.

  A hand touched her shoulder. Yanick.

  “Come on,” he murmured, quiet, steady. “We don’t have time.”

  The warmth of him pressed through the fog, anchoring her as they rushed through the corridor.

  There was a man waiting just around the corner. A thin man, with a crooked posture and dark hair hanging over his eyes. As they approached, he lifted a hand missing two fingers, a jagged emptiness where they should have been, and pressed it to his mouth, signalling silence.

  Footsteps echoed from somewhere ahead. Heavy. Steady. Drawing closer.

  The corridor forked a few steps in front of them, splitting left and right into shadow.

  The skinny man leaned close, his voice barely a whisper.

  “It’s him.” His eyes flicked toward the approaching sound. “The angel.”

  Amaia’s stomach knotted. She knew who he meant. Gabriel.

  Not an angel. Not really. But that was what the Faithful called him in hushed awe, in trembling dread. The Angel of the End Times.

  “He’s not an angel,” Nemeth said quietly. His voice was level, unreadable.

  He stepped forward, his back straightening, his hands curling into loose fists at his sides.

  “You go. I’ll slow him down.”

  Amaia’s breath caught. Slow him down. Not stop. Not fight and kill.

  Slow him down.

  Like a man laying his body across a crumbling bridge. Like a man writing his own ending in the spaces between footfalls.

  “No—” The word tumbled from her lips, too small, too late. “No, not again.”

  He turned to her then, and for a flicker of a moment, just a flicker, there was something soft in his face. A crack in the cold. A shadow of the man she’d known before the night the world fell apart.

  “Ademund lives,” she blurted, the words spilling out like a wound. “He’s here, somewhere there, on the walls.”

  “I know,” Nemeth said.

  It wasn’t surprise in his voice. Or relief. Just quiet, tired knowledge.

  And then, his gaze steady on hers, sharp and glassy and full of things unsaid.

  “If you ever see him again… tell him from me…”

  He hesitated. The words faltered. For the first time, the mask of him slipped, and she saw the ache beneath, raw and trembling.

  “…tell him that I—” He swallowed. Shook his head, a faint, bitter smile tugging at his mouth. “You know. You and him.”

  Tears blurred her vision.

  “I know,” she whispered.

  The footsteps were louder now. Closer. Gabriel was coming.

  Nemeth turned away, moving toward the centre of the corridor, toward the shadow where the angel’s steps were rising from the dark.

  But before they could slip past him, before Yanick could pull her down the left fork, Nemeth reached out.

  Caught Yanick’s sleeve. Pulled him close. And, without warning, folded him into a brief, rough embrace.

  Amaia watched, stunned, as her father leaned close to Yanick’s ear and whispered something. Words she couldn’t catch, couldn’t decipher.

  Then he released him, shoved him gently toward the path ahead.

  “Come."

  Yanick took her hand. His grip was tight, urgent, even though his fingers kept twitching. His eyes flicked once toward Nemeth, toward the shape of a man standing between them and the end of the world.

  And then they were running.

  And she wished she could not hear that. Not hear her father dying.