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I spun, searching for another way through. There wasn't one. Every direction burned.

Golden flames reflected through the churning surface as a familiar silhouette stood on the edge of the small wooden boat.

“You can't outrun me, wife.”

Helion's voice rolled through the bond, unfurling through my mind with a visceral shiver that wracked through me.

The boiling prison collapsed inward, crushing around me like a fist. To avoid getting burnt, I had to swim upwards, towards the ring of orange flames.

He was herding me to the fucking surface.

With no choice, my head broke the surface, blistering air tearing into my lungs. Before I could draw a full breath, fingers like iron clamped around my arm and wrenched me from the sea. I crashed into the rowboat, saltwater spilling from my lips as Helion hauled my tail over the edge.

A blood-curdling scream tore through me as my tail twisted and shattered with wet, audible snaps.

White-hot agony ripped through my body, each fracture stealing another breath until I could only convulse beneath the unbearable weight of it.

Helion grimaced, a shaky breath escaping him as he stroked the back of his knuckles over my cheek.

“I’m so sorry, Lyra.”

His hand drifted toward the locket resting against the singed shirt that barely covered my body. It hovered there, trembling, as though even that small distance carried the weight of a choice that he wasn’t sure he could make.

I tried to shove him away but my strength abandoned me before my hand could even reach his chest, falling uselessly back to my side.

“Shh,” he soothed, his thumb brushing the worn silver casing with heartbreaking tenderness before his fingers curled around it. “You abused my trust by trying to run, Sunshine.”

“No!” I gasped. “Please!”

The chain bit into my skin before it broke, snapping and dangling uselessly in his hand. Golden fire kindled between his fingers.

My lungs seized.

“No!” I screeched, my voice splitting with the last of my power that his heat wasn’t still draining from me.

My memories. The answers I had longed for since the moment the Dead Sea’s song had begun haunting me.

“Wait!” I cried, reaching weakly towards the flames. “I’ll do anything! Please!”

I dropped the wall between our bond, letting the golden light tethering us flare beneath my ribs, flooding my chest with warmth so raw it stole the breath from my lungs.

There were no walls. No lies. No shields. Only the unbearable weight of his love laid bare before me and my furious desperation chasing it away.

Words turned to ash on my tongue and I swallowed hard, looking down at my bare legs, smeared with streaks of my blood.

“Hmm,” he hummed absently.

For one aching heartbeat, I felt his disappointment. The quiet grief of a man who had hoped, however foolishly, that I would love him back.

But how fucking could I?

“Helion-”

“Shh,” he soothed. “It’s okay.” The gentleness in his voice was somehow crueller than if he'd shouted.

He tore open his shirt, buttons snapping free and skittering across the wood.

My vision swam. The world blurred beneath the haze of heat pulsing through me.