“Jhamal.” The words are raw. “I love you, too. So much. I’m sorry… I’m so, so sorry.” I loop my fingers between his. “Hear me, I love you. I have loved you since you knit together my wounds in that cell, since you told me stories to fall asleep and nursed me back to health. Jhamal, I love you.”

“You cannot hide your love for me any more than you can hide the nose on your face. It is in those tears that you cry and the way you touch my hand. I savor it all. Every moment. Every breath.”

I weep, my chest a knot.

“You are my life and have been for so long.” He groans in my arms and I pull him closer, pressing on his wound as hard as I can. But in seconds my hand swims in blood.

“Jhamal, no, stay with me, please.” My voice cracks. “I-I can get you out of here. I…”

“No,” he breathes. “Sssh. The last moments I have, I will look upon the sun. Smile for me, my Queen.”

I sniffle and force my lips to curl; tears are salty on them.

“Please!” I cry out, turning my palms upward and looking up. “Ancestors, if you can give me anything, do anything for me in this moment, please keep his heart beating.” I collapse, crying on his chest. “Please, I’m so sorry I doubted your loyalty. I’m so sorry I…”

“You had to protect your heart. Protecting things is your gift. It is what you do. I will leave this world loving you and you loving me. Knowing he tried to take you from this world, and I helped stop it.” His eyes close and I hold on to the hum of his breath against me, growing more shallow by the second. I press him to me as if that’ll save him. As if that’ll make it possible to hold him here. Moments pass and I don’t breathe.

He goes still in my arms, a smile painted on his lips.

And my heart bleeds.

CHAPTER FORTY

IT’S BEEN AN ENTIRE day since Jhamal died in my arms and somehow it feels like a decade. I laid awake last night replaying the stories he’d told me when we were locked up together. I remember the way he looked at me, and the entire world quiets. I hold my eyes closed, as if doing so lets me hold on to him. He had a scent about him and I would give the world if I could smell it once more. I move down the corridor and he is in every moment, every conversation, and the spaces between them.