Chapter 182 up
Nyla tried to stand.
The thought came first—clear, insistent—get up. Her body followed a second too late, like a delayed echo that no longer trusted her. She planted her palms against the pavement, the grit biting into her skin, and pushed.
Pain exploded.
It wasn’t sharp at first. It was wide. All-encompassing. A wave that surged through her ribs, her shoulder, her head, dragging her breath out of her lungs as if it had been stolen.
She gasped and collapsed back down.
The ground rushed up to meet her cheek again, harder this time. The world tilted violently, the street spinning like it had been unfastened from its axis. Sounds stretched and warped—voices melting into echoes, footsteps smearing into distant thunder.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
No. Stay awake.
She forced them open again, blinking against the blur. The sky above her fractured into pieces of pale blue and blinding white. Sunlight stabbed behind her eyes, sending nausea rolling through her stomach.
Evan.
The name pulsed in her head in time with her heartbeat.
She rolled onto her side with a broken sound, half gasp, half sob, and tried again. Her elbow slid out from under her, useless, her arm trembling violently as if it no longer remembered how to hold weight.
She hit the ground a third time.
The impact knocked what little air she had left from her lungs. She lay there, chest heaving, mouth open, dragging in shallow, painful breaths that tasted like blood and dust.
Everything felt wrong.
Her body was no longer a single thing—it was fragments screaming at once. Her head throbbed with a deep, nauseating ache. Her ribs burned every time she breathed. Her shoulder felt loose, unstable, like it might slip out of place if she moved it the wrong way.
Still, she turned her head.
She had to see him.
The street swam in and out of focus as she searched. Shadows passed through her vision, people-shaped and indifferent. Someone shouted something she couldn’t understand. A door slammed. Tires screeched somewhere far away.
And then—
There he was.
Evan.
He was farther away now, carried backward by hands that did not belong to him. His body twisted and fought even as they dragged him, his small form rigid with terror.
Nyla’s heart slammed against her ribs.
“Evan,” she whispered.
The word barely made it past her lips. It felt too small for the distance between them.
She lifted her hand again.
Her fingers shook uncontrollably, stretching toward him, reaching through space and pain and the growing darkness at the edges of her vision.
He turned his head.
For one terrible, perfect moment, their eyes met.
Evan’s face was wet with tears, his mouth open in a silent cry she could not hear anymore. His eyes were wide, wild, filled with a terror that went beyond fear of strangers or pain.
It was the terror of separation.
Not because he was being taken.
But because he was being torn away from her.
She saw it with unbearable clarity—the moment his understanding shifted. The moment he realized that this was not about where he was going, but about who he was being forced to leave behind.
Nyla felt something inside her collapse.
She tried to push herself up again, driven by nothing but the need to close the distance between them, even by inches.
Her arm gave out completely.
She fell back, her body slamming into the pavement, vision flashing white. The world spun violently, faster now, like it was trying to pull her under.
“No,” she whispered. “Please.”
Her hand dropped limply to the ground.
Evan kept looking at her.
Even as they dragged him farther away, even as his body was turned in the opposite direction, his eyes stayed locked on hers. She saw his mouth form her name.
She couldn’t hear it.
But she knew.
“I’m here,” she tried to say.
The words didn’t come out.
Her throat closed painfully, tears spilling freely now, streaking across her temples and into her hair. Her chest hitched with every breath, the effort of staying conscious growing heavier with each second.
She wanted to tell him not to be afraid.
She wanted to tell him she wasn’t leaving him.
She wanted to promise him that she would find him, that this was not the end, that this violence was not stronger than the choice they had made.
But her body betrayed her.
The men turned the corner.
Evan disappeared from view.
The space he left behind felt enormous, like a hole torn straight through the street.
Nyla lay there, staring at the place where he had been, her vision unfocused and dimming. The sounds of the city crept back in slowly, as if embarrassed by their own absence—murmurs, footsteps, a distant siren that rose and fell without urgency.
Someone knelt beside her.
“Ma’am? Can you hear me?”
She didn’t answer.
Her thoughts drifted, fragments slipping through her grasp. Images rose and fell without order—Evan laughing with ice cream smeared on his chin, Evan curled against her side on the couch, Evan’s voice asking if she would stay.
I choose you, he had said once, quiet and certain.
The memory burned.
She had chosen him too.
And now she was here, broken on the pavement, while he was being carried away by force.
Her fingers curled weakly against the ground.
This isn’t how it ends, she thought, clinging to the idea like a lifeline. It can’t be.
But the weight of her body pressed her down, heavy and uncooperative. Her eyelids fluttered, the effort of keeping them open becoming unbearable.
“Stay with me,” someone said urgently. “Help is coming.”
Help.
The word sounded distant and useless.
She felt hands carefully rolling her onto her side, felt fabric pressed against her bleeding mouth. She winced weakly, a sound slipping out of her without shape.
Her gaze drifted upward again, catching a last glimpse of the sky between buildings—too blue, too calm, like it hadn’t noticed what had just happened beneath it.
Her thoughts slowed.
Darkness crept in from the edges, soft and insistent.
The last thing she held onto was Evan’s face as he looked back at her—not in fear of where he was going, but in terror of being separated from the person who had chosen him when no one else would.