Page 89 of Devil’s Reign

My chest heaves as I push myself onto my elbows, coughing until my ribs ache. I blink hard to clear my vision, and the shapes around me slowly resolve into wreckage. Flames are climbing over broken pallets and scattered cardboard, spreading with patient, hungry confidence around the entire warehouse. The heat becomes hotter by the second, the smoke becoming thicker. Chokier.

I glance around, but I can’t see anything beyond the spot I’m in.

“Vanya!” My voice cracks as I scream his name, triggering another coughing fit.

I force myself to my feet, wincing with every movement. My whole body is one continuous note of pain—my face, ribs, arms, legs, everything hurts. But I push forward anyway, stumbling over a chunk of concrete, coughing harder.

“Vanya!” I scream again as soon as I can. No answer. The ominous silence presses down like a weight. Each second he doesn’t answer me stretches into an unbearable eternity. Somewhere in the wreckage, a groaning beam collapses to the floor, increasing my urgency.

Where is he?

“Vanya!” I scream louder this time. Still nothing.

Panic claws at my chest. My legs shake, but I force them to move, weaving through the debris, eyes stinging as I search through the fire and smoke. My lungs seize with each inhale, every breath shallow and painful.

“Vanya, please...” My voice breaks, my heart tightening in raw fear.

Then I hear it. “Milani.”

I go completely still. It’s faint. Barely more than a rasp beneath the noise. But it’s his voice. I freeze for a second as relief crashes through me so sharply it hurts. Then I’m moving, stumbling over rubble with no grace or caution.

“Vanya!”

On this side of the warehouse, the wreckage is worse. More of the roof came down here, and bodies are scattered everywhere in various states of ruin—some eerily still, blood pooling beneath them. Others writhing, groaning, missing limbs. A few drag themselves towards the broken entrance, flames licking at their clothes as they crawl.

I don’t look at any of them long enough to let them become real to me. I’m looking for one person.

Then I finally see him, and the rest of the warehouse simply drops away. He’s on the ground, several feet away from where he was before the collapse, pinned beneath a fallen beam, his face streaked with blood and soot. The sight sends fear surging through me, but relief floods in harder. He’s alive. He’s breathing. That’s all that matters.

I don’t stop to think. I close the distance between us, then sink to my knees next to him, hands shaking as I reach for his face, his chest, anywhere I can touch to assure myself he’s real.

“I’m here, amuri miu... I’m here,” I murmur, running my hand through his hair.

His eyes close briefly, his head tipping back into my touch, and my throat tightens so hard it’s even harder to breathe. I can’t tell if I’m crying or if it’s just the smoke burning my eyes. I move my attention to the beam across his legs. Up close, it’s worse than it looked from a distance, and my relief fractures, fear rushing back in twice as hard because he’s trapped and I don’t know if I can get him out. The beam looks impossibly heavy, the kind of thing that takes several people to lift. But I press my palms against it anyway, searching for leverage. Then I push. It doesn't move. Not even slightly.

Hot tears spill down my face. I reposition and push harder, pouring everything I have into it, but it’s useless. Behind me, something gives away—a beam, or what’s left of one—and the collapse sends a wall of heat rolling over my back, the fire suddenly close enough that I can feel it licking at my clothes, the air around me shimmering.

I flinch for half a second, then push again. I can’t stop trying.

Vanya’s hand closes around my wrist, and I glance down at him, my chest caving at the resigned acceptance on his face. “You need to leave.”

I blink at him, his words not computing at first. Leave. Leave him? Leave him under a beam in a burning building and walk out while he—while he⁠—

I glare at him for even daring to suggest that. “No.”

45

IVAN

No?

“This is not the time to be fucking stubborn, Melani,” I snap, the effort of hiding my pain and fear from her grinding my patience down to nothing. We have minutes, maybe less. “I’m trapped here, but you’re not. Go!”

“Help me push this beam so we can get out together.”

She doesn’t even look at me when she says it. Just puts her hands back on the beam, bracing, pushing. As if I haven’t already tried to push it off me. As if I didn’t damn near tear myself apart trying to get free the second I heard her voice, refusing to answer her calls until I could get to her. But then she started to sound more desperate, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. Now I wish I hadn’t answered. Would she have left the burning warehouse if she had assumed I was already dead? Probably. Instead, she’s here, her eyes blazing with determination, her chin set stubbornly as she strains against something she can’t move.

“This isn’t something we can do together, Milani.” My voice shakes with panic and heat, sweat dripping down my face. “You leave. Go get help and come back here.”