Chapter 56

“Belle,” Maxwell rasps as he collapses on top of me.

Another boom rings out and I scream, twisting my body on the chair and pushing us to the wet ground, the impact disorienting. The chair cracks and snaps, my bindings loosening, and I look up, finding Morris freezing in shock, a dark red stain blooming on his chest before he keels over.

Elias steps into sight from the hedges and lowers his gun, a few men following him. His eyes are cold with fury. “Fuck, I couldn’t get a clear shot before.”

He steps over Morris and aims his gun at his forehead. I squeeze my eyes shut as another shot rings out, followed by the loud cries of the crows nearby.

I crawl on top of Maxwell, who’s lying so still on the ground, his chest is barely moving.

He took a bullet meant for me. He sacrificed his life for me.

“Please , Maxwell. Please don’t die on me.” Tears stream down my face as I lean over him, gasping when I see the blood pooling on the soil beneath him, crimson rivers of red.

“Here, press this on the wound. Keep the pressure firm. I’m going to get help.” Elias rips the hem of his shirt and shoves it to me before darting off into the night, his men following him.

Another burst of lightning splinters across the skies, bathing the darkness in a brief flash of light, illuminating the sea of blood on the ground. The cry of thunder follows, mournful and filled with wrath as I press harder on the wound on his back .

The cloth soaks in a matter of seconds. I can’t stop the bleeding. Tears stream down my face. I’m hit with the same dark dream I’ve had over the last few months—the bloody tendrils spreading on Silas’s chest, his mournful sobs echoing in the air.

Dreams or visions, past or present, they all cease to make sense or matter.

Nothing matters except this man in front of me, who loves me so much, he threw himself in front of a bullet for me.

“Maxwell, please stay awake. For me, please. Stay with me,” I sob, the agony in my chest eviscerating.

Maxwell’s breathing is ragged, the color slowly leaching from his face, his gaze murky as his lips part. He reaches for my hand. He’s so cold, so clammy, and I bury my face into his neck, my fingers clutching his tightly.

“I-I’ve always hated the r-rain,” he whispers as the storm rages around us, a mist sweeping into the garden, cloaking the ground in a mystic fog. “It feels sad, haunting, like I can’t breathe and the skies are crying with me.”

He coughs and I shush him. “You’ll be fine. Elias is getting help. You’ll be okay. I’m here, Maxwell. I’m here with you always,” I whisper.

I tilt my head up and look into his startling eyes. The intense pools of gray and charcoal, brimming with passion, with love, with heartache and pain. The very eyes that drew me to him that first night, the feeling of long-lost souls reuniting.

Kismet. Fated. Soulmates.

The light burning behind these beautiful eyes is fading fast and I shake my head, gripping his hand as sob after sob tears from my throat. I can’t lose him. Not again, not after he just found me. The thoughts are scattered, chaotic, more clues to the riddle I still don’t have the answer to.

But I don’t care. All I know is, my Silas, my Maxwell found me, and my soul will forever be bereft if he leaves me again .

“I never knew why the rain made me feel this way,” he whispers, his free hand trembling as he reaches for my face.

Gasping, I lean into his caress, my eyes fluttering close as he presses me toward him and softly kisses my forehead. An electric frisson flows through my body at his kiss, much like our first kiss that night at the pier, when I felt his heartbeat beating against mine.

“Perhaps I’ve lost you once before in the rain and ever since then, I’ve been wandering, lost, searching for you,” he rasps in my ear. Those words sound so familiar, but I can’t think straight.

His breathing weakens with each passing second. He murmurs, “But now I’ve found you again, my Belle. I’m no longer sad in the rain anymore. I’m complete.”

I shake my head, tears blurring my vision. A scything agony radiates from my chest as I kiss the back of his icy hand before linking his long fingers with mine.

He’s saying goodbye.

“You listen to me, you insane man. You aren’t allowed to leave me, you hear me? You told me you’d let me make a choice this time. You promised me! You can’t take that away from me!”

He lets out a rough chuckle, his pale lips twisting in a pained smile. “I’m s-sorry for not keeping my promise.”

Maxwell’s chest spasms and he coughs some more. This time, blood spews from his lips and drips down his chin. “D-Don’t grieve for me, my little muse. You’ve given my life meaning. The c-colors are incandescent in my world ever since I met you. You are the streak of red in my atrovirens.”

“No, no, no. You are my streak of red and stop talking like this! Because you’re going to get better. Then I’ll be so mad at you for doing this to me… for saving…saving—” The words are stuck in my throat and I clutch him tighter against me.

Moisture pools in his eyes as he strains a pained smile. He whispers, “Live. Bloom in the sun. Feel me in its warmth and I’ll be waiting for you in the rain. ”

“No! Elias is getting help. You’ll be okay. Fate didn’t put us together just to tear us apart again! Don’t you dare give up on me, Maxwell Angus Silas Anderson. Don’t you fucking dare!”

He swallows and coughs and I feel more wetness seeping between my fingers, but I don’t look down. I know it’s his essence coating my hands, the bloody rivulets I can’t seem to stop, no matter how hard I’m pressing on his wound. I can’t stare at anything but his beautiful eyes and face in these moments I have with him.

Moments I’m not sure if I’ll ever have any more.

“I-I love you, Belle. So, so much,” he whispers, his eyes fluttering shut.

“No! Open your eyes, Maxwell, stay with me. Please, I can’t do this without you,” I cry, my hand caressing his face. “Please don’t let me do life without you.”

He blinks, the motion seeming taxing for him. His gaze is unfocused as he stares at me. It’s like he has one foot in the ether and I’m the one keeping him tethered to this world.

And I won’t let go.

“I love you most ardently and fervently,” he rasps, his deep voice hoarse and filled with passion. “Yours forever…this lifetime and all the lifetimes thereafter.”

The words are haunting, echoes of the same words Silas wrote to his Emma in my dream. I feel every single one of them in my soul. I can’t compute what this all means. All I know is my heart had a hole in it ever since I could remember, a chasm only filled when I met him, a tapestry wrinkled and torn in the ages, only recently mended.

“Maxwell, I love you, so, so much. God, so much,” I sob as I rain kisses on his face, my chest hollowing, my nose inhaling his sweet scent of amber and sandalwood, now tinged with the metallic smell of his blood. “Please, don’t leave me.”

“Perhaps in another life, we’ll go to Venice, and we can paint the canals together,” he whispers, his voice slurred. Delirious. “Hope is the dream of a waking man…and I-I’ll see you in your dreams… ”

His eyes roll back and close, his grip on my hand slowly loosening. I hear the shrill cries of sirens in the distance; the thundering sounds of footsteps pounding on wet soil as lightning coils against the dark skies again, the storm rioting around us, wrapping us in a tearful embrace.

“Maxwell!” I scream and cry in his chest.

Not again, please. I huddle him close to me, rocking his limp body in my arms. If there is a God, please let him stay with me this time.

Please.