Page 92 of Obliterated

He pulled out two rubber ducks he said were still at his place but belonged to Tass. One scowled—all angry beak and scrunched brow—and the other was red with little yellow dots and a green leaf for a hat.

A fucking strawberry rubber duck.

Max almost teared up all over again, muttering that Tass had always fucking loved strawberries, and he’d wondered for years wherethose stupid fucking duckswent. Now they sit on our windowsill with the rest like a dumb little duck army. Sometimes I catch myself looking at them like they’re a map back to something we’ve lost.

I don’t know. It kinda feels like she’s watching over us, waiting for us. And right now, with Roe in front of me and Max at my shoulder, that feels like enough to keep moving. To get this part over with so we can continue with the rest of our lives. Rebuild this place into something better.

Starting with sentencing this bitch.

“Noura El-Amin.” Roe’s voice cuts through the crowd and the roar drops into a dangerous hush. “You stand accused of crimes against this island and its people. What do you have to say for yourself?”

She’s small as always, that fucking wisp of a woman, but she plants her feet and stares back like she owns the world. No robe, just tattered clothes and a dagger clenched in a fist. I have to respect the nerve of it. “One law broken means one Walker,” she says flatly. “I accept that.”

Yes… one Walker for every time you enter the Pit. But she doesn’t know whatkindof Walker she’s getting.

“So it shall be.” Roe’s hand cuts the air and the words fall like a command. He nods to Max, who’s lighting up a smoke as if he’s got all the time in the world before pulling the lever for the gate.

It rattles, iron grinding as it rises. Max mutters a low, cruel little prayer under his breath, and I can feel the shape of his smile even before I look up. He inhales on his smoke, that delicious curl at the corner of his mouth.

“Gods, I love that sound,” he murmurs as Noura’s scream rips out, the sound she makes when she sees what’s waiting forher. Chompy moves like a nightmare made of rot and teeth, all terrible grace, and the crowd forgets how to breathe.

But I don’t look at the Pit. I can’t. I only stare at him. At those sin-as-fuck lips as he breathes smoke out, at the wicked wildness burning in his star-flecked eyes while he watches his pet tear the woman apart.

His expression is pure, filthy glee.

I love him. Completely. Irrevocably. Demons and all. The madness and the mercy, the monster and the man. He is blood and breath and bravery, and on this ruined island we found each other.

We chose each other.

When her screams finally die, when the last wet sound drops away and the crowd’s roar creaks back like something waking, Max turns to me and grins that dangerous, gentle grin. He presses his forehead to mine and for a long beat, there’s just us.

“It’s over,” he says, and the words are everything.

He kisses me then. Not gentle, not soft, but full of smoke and shadow and promise. A kiss that tastes like victory and like the terrible things we’ve survived. It’s everything and nothing, fierce and quiet all at once.

It’s hope. A raw, feral, and impossible hope for a better life in this fucked-up excuse for a world, but I take it with both hands, hold on to it, and will never let it go.

– THE END –