Chapter 137 Hundred and forty two
“Ryder, move,” Sienna breathed, her hand closing around his arm the moment the silver light thinned enough for her to see the outline of his body again.
“I’m fine,” he lied, his voice tight, his breathing unsteady, his shoulders shaking from the curse forcing itself through him like fire looking for an exit. He tried to push her back, but she didn’t budge. Her fingers only tightened.
“No, you’re not,” she said. “And I’m not losing you here.”
The courtyard around them smoldered, the stones cracked in spirals that glowed faintly under their boots. The air still trembled from Lunaris’s departure, leaving a coldness that wrapped around Sienna’s ribs and refused to let go. Smoke drifted into the open archway, carrying the shouts of soldiers climbing the upper staircases.
“They’re coming,” Ryder said. “We don’t have time to, ”
“We make time,” she cut in. “Move.”
He stared at her like she had just handed him salvation and damnation in the same breath. She waited for him to argue, to demand she step back, to threaten that the curse would tear him apart if she stayed close. Instead, he reached for her hand.
His fingers brushed hers.
Pain exploded through him.
He flinched, the curse ripping down his spine, claws half-shifting in reflex. But he still caught her hand fully, lacing his fingers with hers as if the act alone could hold him steady.
“Stay behind me,” he said, though he didn’t sound certain of anything except her presence.
She stepped beside him instead.
“Try again,” she murmured.
Ryder almost smiled. The broken kind. The kind she had seen only twice in her life, once when he died for her the first time, and once when he returned knowing the curse made him her executioner in every lifetime.
The soldiers reached the shattered doorframe.
Sienna dragged Ryder with her toward the lower passage. “This way.”
He nodded once and followed, but every footstep shook. The curse clawed at him, twisting his muscles, urging him to pull away from her, push her down, run from her, run to her, anything but stay steady.
“Sienna,” he rasped. “Let go.”
“No.”
“You’re hurting me.”
“I know.”
He swallowed a broken sound. “You don’t care?”
“Not enough to let go.”
He almost laughed. “You’re going to kill me.”
“Not before I save you.”
The corridor split in two directions. Flames licked along the right wall, an overturned torch, a broken banner, footsteps and blood leading toward the city gates. To the left, moon-pale dust from Lunaris’s entrance drifted like a dying snowfall.
“Left,” Ryder muttered. “The tunnels run deeper that way. We can slip out behind the river wall.”
Sienna hesitated. “That’s closer to the cursed ridge.”
“That’s why they won’t look for us there.”
She didn’t argue. She squeezed his hand and pulled him down the left corridor.
The ground trembled again, far away but strong enough that bits of stone dust fell from the ceiling.
“The Citadel is collapsing,” Sienna whispered.
“Zane pushed the front lines too fast,” Ryder said. “The lower city must be burning.”
Another tremor answered him.
They kept moving.
Echoes followed them, shouting, metal clashing, wolves shifting in the distance, the world tearing itself apart as factions surged through streets that once held festivals instead of blood.
Sienna slowed when Ryder stumbled against the wall. “Talk to me.”
“I’m fine.”
She turned sharply. “You are not.”
Ryder’s jaw clenched. “I have to keep moving. The curse gets worse the longer I’m near you.”
“Then hold on.”
“That’s the problem,” he murmured, looking at her with eyes that weren’t entirely his. “I am holding on. And the curse hates it.”
She cupped the side of his face, forcing him to meet her stare. “Ryder. Look at me.”
He did.
And his knees almost buckled.
“Stay with me,” she said softly.
His breath hitched. “If I stay any closer, ”
“I don’t care.”
He leaned his forehead against hers, trembling under the weight of a love that broke gods and worlds. “Sienna… you’ll kill me.”
“No,” she whispered. “I’ll save you.”
Behind them footsteps echoed, dozens of them. Sienna grabbed Ryder’s arm again and dragged him deeper into the tunnel.
The passage darkened, lit only by cracks in the ceiling where moonlight seeped through in thin, uneven stripes. The air thickened with dust and fading power.
“Do you hear that?” Sienna asked.
Ryder listened.
A river.
Not just the river, water hitting stone in fast pulses.
“They collapsed part of the aqueduct,” he said. “The water’s diverting. We need to cross before the lower channel floods or we’ll be trapped.”
They ran.
Ryder fought each step, the curse ripping inside him, trying to drag him backward, toward open air, toward the moon, toward the goddess who still watched from the sky.
Sienna noticed every twitch, every stagger. “Tell me what it feels like.”
“Burning,” he breathed. “And cold. And wrong.”
“Stay with me.”
“It wants to tear me apart.”
“Stay with me.”
“It wants to drag me from you.”
“Stay with me.”
“It wants to kill you.”
She stopped.
He nearly crashed into her.
“Ryder,” she said slowly, “do you want to hurt me?”
He looked horrified. “Never.”
“Then the curse doesn’t decide anything.”
He shook his head. “You don’t understand, ”
“Then make me.”
He swallowed hard. “When I’m close to you, it tries to break me. When I’m far from you, it tries to break me another way. Lunaris made sure no distance saves me. No closeness either.”
“Then we take both away.”
His brows pulled together. “What does that mean?”
“It means we run.”
They ran again, faster, deeper into the passage until the stone dipped downward into a narrow archway. Water rushed under the slabs, a stream fed by the disrupted canal. It shone with moonlight but moved with unnatural speed, as if the goddess’s magic was woven into it.
“We jump?” Sienna asked.
“We jump,” Ryder said.
The soldiers were close now, too close.
She tightened her grip on him. “Count.”
“One,” he said.
“Two.”
“Three.”
They leapt together, landing in the waist-deep water with a splash that echoed across the stone. The current snatched at them immediately, dragging them toward the narrow opening at the far end of the tunnel.
Ryder held her with both arms despite the curse screaming through him, despite every bone trembling like it wanted to splinter. Sienna held onto him with equal ferocity, her face brushing against his shoulder as the current pulled them into the dark.
“Don’t let go,” she said.
“Never,” he answered, voice breaking.
The tunnel chamber rushed past, stone blurring into shadow. They shot through the opening, water slamming them into an underground channel that poured them out behind the river wall, exactly where Ryder said it would.
They gasped as they surfaced, clinging to each other as the cold night air hit them.
Ryder dragged them to the edge and pulled Sienna up onto the bank. She collapsed beside him, her hair dripping, her breath trembling.
He pushed himself onto his elbows, water cascading from his clothes.
“Sienna,” he whispered, staring at her as if he had never truly seen her before.
The moon flickered overhead.
Sienna looked up slowly.
The flicker wasn’t fading.
It was growing.
The light dimmed again.
The sky pulsed.
Ryder sat up sharply, curse reacting instantly, ripping through his veins like the goddess had reached through the sky and taken hold of his spine.
“No,” he breathed. “Not now.”
Sienna crawled to him, gripping his face with both hands. “Look at me.”
His eyes burned with shifting color, silver, black, something ancient twisting beneath.
“Sienna,” he gasped, voice breaking, “something’s wrong with the moon.”
She turned to look,
, and the moon cracked.