Magnolia!"
His voice cut through the darkness like a blade. Rhett's feet pounded across wet leaves and twisted roots, his breath visible in the freezing air. The cracked moon, still crimson and fractured like stained glass, glowed faintly behind a thick fog curling over the cliffs.
He saw her silhouette stumbling ahead, barefoot, blood streaked down one thigh, her hair wild and tangled with moss and ash.
"Don't, follow, me!" she yelled without turning back.
But Rhett didn't stop.
He'd followed her through warzones. Through Syndicate traps. Through his own guilt. He wasn't stopping now, not when she was breaking.
When he caught up to her, she had fallen to her knees at the cliff's edge, the jagged rock beneath her glowing faintly as if the earth itself remembered the fire that had once slept inside it.
"Magnolia," he breathed, kneeling beside her. "Talk to me."
She didn't look at him.
