Fighting my baser impulses, I reach out a hand and drag him up to the seat next to me.

He nods his thanks, buckling his seatbelt right away. I feel the king’s eyes on me, but I refuse to look over at him. I don’t want to see his gratitude.

Shrapnel pings against the outside of the plane. But it’s not until I hear the screeching sound of metal smashing into metal and the aircraft shudders that my eyes move to the window. Outside I see one of the engines catch fire.

How long does good fortune last for people like us? This is Russian roulette, and this might be the shot the kills us.

I squeeze the king’s hand and take a calming breath. I don’t fear the end. I haven’t for a very long time. This isn’t the way I’d choose to go, but there are worse ways to die than reclining in a plush chair, the world spread out beneath you.

The alarms are still blaring, the officers all have wide eyes. But no one screams. Montes brings my hand to his mouth and holds our entwined hands there.

I see his lips move. I can’t hear his words, but I know what he’s saying.

I love you.

I pinch my lips together. Only hours ago I almost said those very words right back to him.

His gaze meets mine. My mouth parts. I feel those words coming back, moving up my throat. They want out.

The plane hits some turbulence, breaking the spell. My gaze cuts away from him as my body’s jerked about. The moment’s gone, and if we die right now, we’ll die with him never hearing those three words fall from my lips.

I can’t tell if I feel relief or disappointment.

Both, I think.

Our seats begin to shake as our velocity increases. Above the shrill alarm I swear I hear the rumble of engines. Through the aircraft’s tiny windows, I catch a glimpse of fighter jets. If they’ve come to end us, they got here too late.

But as I watch, they accelerate past us, presumably towards the enemy, who I still haven’t seen.

The officers begin to clap and whoop at the sight, like we’ve been saved. All those jets managed to do was head off one enemy. But now gravity is our more obvious opponent.

Our aircraft continues to plunge straight towards the earth. I hate that I have enough time to feel my mortality slipping through my fingers.

I swear I feel the plane pull up, but I have no way of knowing whether that’s just wishful thinking.

The ground is getting closer and closer. Our angle is still bad.

I look at Montes one more time. If I’m going to die, it will be staring into his eyes. We were bound to go down together.

When I meet his gaze, I can see relief, but I don’t know what put the expression there.

It turns out that, whatever the reason, he’ll live to tell me about it.

The plane levels out at the very last minute.

My gaze is ripped away from him as we slam into the earth. I’m jerked violently against my seatbelt. Part of the ceiling pulls away from the metal frame on impact, cutting off my view of the front half of the cabin.

The world is consumed by an awful screeching noise as the plane slides across the ground. I hear plastic and metal ripping away from the underside of the plane. A few screams join the noise, some panicked, and some high-pitched cries that cut off sharply.

And then, miraculously, we grind to a stop.

For several seconds I do nothing but catch my breath.

I didn’t die.

“Nire bihotza, my hand.”

I hear Montes’s voice, and my chest tightens almost painfully.

The king didn’t die either.

A choked sound comes out of my mouth as I face him and see that he is, in fact, alive.

I release his hand, a hand I’ve been squeezing the life out of, and cup the side of his face. I can’t put into words what I feel. But now the relief that was so blatant in his eyes earlier seems to be making a home for itself beneath my sternum.

I pull him to me and kiss him roughly. How horrifying that my heart has come to rely on this creature.

I feel his surprise—he still isn’t used to my affection, especially when I do it in public. But once his shock wears off, he kisses me back with a possessive intensity I’ve become familiar with.

Death will come for us both, sooner rather than later, but it won’t happen today.

Chapter 35

Serenity

I watch the unfamiliar scenery pass me by. Montes and I sit in the back of the armored vehicle that arrived on scene shortly after we crashed.

Two of the king’s men didn’t survive the crash landing. One’s neck snapped and the other was crushed under the section of ceiling that ripped away from the airplane’s frame.

I’m so numb. At some point, you see too many people die. It becomes just one more ache in your heart. Another person taken too soon.

It takes several hours to reach Shanghai. When we do, I can only stare. Many of the buildings are in ruins, but what remains is in use. And the structures are from before. They’ve been kept up for over a century.

We eventually pull up to a high-rise that faces the East China Sea.

I should be taken with the sparkling ocean. I never imagined I’d see an ocean this far east. And it’s beautiful. But I can’t seem to tear my gaze away from the goliath we’ve stopped in front of.

We step out of the car, some combo of sewage and ocean air carried along the breeze.

“Have you ever been to the top of a skyscraper?” Montes asks, steering me towards it.

I shake my head. Montes had cornered me inside an abandoned skyscraper once, when I lost my memory, but I never made it close to the top.