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Zoey couldn’t breathe.
The sound of Rumi’s voice, that single word drawn out and broken, still carved through her chest like it was happening all over again. She heard it when she tried to sleep, she heard it during rehearsals, she heard it when Rumi smiled at her like nothing had shattered between them. It was never gone.
“Zoey, please.”
She had been back in the stadium, lights dimmed, crowd a blur of faces that weren’t faces anymore. Just jeers, just cries, just the ringing throb in her ears that grew louder every time she blinked. The memory had stained her—so clear it was more than memory, it was a place she returned to without meaning to.
Her eyes had gone to Rumi’s arms. She had never seen them uncovered before. Pale and strong, but broken in ways Zoey couldn’t understand. Scars crossed her skin like truths carved too deep to hide. Some healed jagged, some smoother, some still too fresh. And then the glow—burning pink, alive with something that wasn’t human. The markings crawled over her biceps, etched into her like fire that never cooled.
Rumi had begged.
“No. Didn’t you see? See the gold? We’re so close. No. Don’t leave. Don’t leave.” Her voice fractured on the last words, pleading in a way Zoey had never heard.”
But the patterns were still there, pulsing against her skin like they were part of her heartbeat.
Zoey remembered her own heartbeat, the way it kicked against her ribs so hard she thought it might burst out. Her Shin-Kal felt heavy in her hands, two blades drawn though she never fought with just two. She couldn’t move, couldn’t lower them. Couldn’t believe.
“Please don’t leave. Don’t leave!”
The sound that came out of Rumi then hadn’t been human either. A raw demon’s voice, ragged with grief, tearing out from a throat that belonged to someone Zoey loved.
And still Zoey hadn’t answered.
Mira had been the first. Mira, steady, always the wall between them and the world. She drew the Go-Dok and pointed it straight, no hesitation. Her hand trembled, but her aim didn’t.
Zoey had felt her chest split.
Rumi’s eyes had darted between them, shimmering with something that was already breaking. She begged Mira. Then she begged Zoey. She always turned to Zoey.
Zoey, who never left her side.
Zoey, who smiled when Rumi couldn’t.
Zoey, who made herself the promise that Rumi would never feel alone.
“Zoey, please.”
But Zoey’s blades stayed raised. She had felt her throat close, her jaw locked, her own voice gone. The words she could have said—anything, anything at all—they never came.
And in that silence, Rumi shattered.
Zoey saw it happen. In her face, in her eyes, in the way her arms pulled in tight around her body like she could fold herself away from their sight. She looked at them as if their weapons had pierced her already.
And maybe they had.
Zoey had watched her run. Watched her vanish into shadow with those glowing marks crawling her arms, with her voice still raw in the air. That voice never faded, not even when the stadium grew quiet. Not even when Mira lowered her blade and refused to meet Zoey’s eyes. Not even when they found themselves staring at the sealed hoonmoon later, cracked and useless, a promise lost.
It had been almost a year.
A year since that night.
A year since Zoey’s betrayal.
And now they were together. All of them. Rumi, Mira, Zoey. The bond that grew in the aftermath—what should have been impossible, what should have remained broken—somehow had become the love that surrounded them every day.
Rumi smiled again. She laughed, she teased, she leaned against them in tired rehearsals. She pressed kisses against Zoey’s cheeks, against Mira’s hair, against whatever soft place she could reach as though to say, I’m here, I forgive you, I love you still.
And Mira softened too. Mira, who had drawn her blade without pause, who had flinched afterward like she’d betrayed her own heart. Mira, who had always been steady and strong, allowed herself to be held by the same arms she once pointed her weapon at.
Zoey watched them. She watched, she nodded, she cried when Rumi’s embrace became too much to hold in. She whispered that she was sorry, and Rumi answered every time with the same words.
“I forgive you.”
Sometimes Zoey believed her.
Most of the time, she didn’t.
Because every night Zoey returned to that stadium. Every night the roar of the crowd drowned her. Every night she saw Rumi’s scars, saw the glow, saw the look in her eyes as if she’d been torn open not by weapons but by silence.
Her silence.
Zoey had failed her.
She had been the one Rumi turned to last. Not Mira. Not anyone else. Zoey.
And Zoey had raised her blades higher.
There was no undoing it. No forgiveness real enough to erase the moment her heart had chosen fear over love.
Even now, lying tangled between them on Mira’s bed, Zoey felt the weight of it pressing down. Rumi’s arm curled around her waist, Mira’s steady warmth against her back, and Zoey’s eyes remained open in the dark.
She felt the tears before she knew they were coming. Silent, soaking into the pillow, her throat burning as she held back every sound. She didn’t want to wake them. She didn’t want them to know.
Because Rumi had forgiven her. Mira had forgiven her. But Zoey hadn’t forgiven herself.
She never would.
And still, in the silence, she heard it.
That voice.
That plea.
“Zoey, please.”