DAEMON'S POV
He didn't feel her die.
Not at first.
For a few heartbeats that stretched into eternity, Daemon kept listening for the whisper of her breath against his chest — the faint flutter that had always reminded him she was still there, still fighting, still choosing to live.
But the silence that followed was obscene.
Deafening.
"Zina?" he rasped, his voice raw, almost unrecognizable to his own ears. "Zina, answer me."
She didn't.
Her hair, a deathly silver-white and soft as frost, fell through his fingers like water. Her hand, the same one that used to grip his arm whenever she mocked him for being too serious, now hung limp against his thigh.
Lifeless—
"No…"
He pressed his palm against her chest again, desperate, wild— his power surging from his hand into her like he could force her heart to remember its duty. But it didn't.
"Your Majesty," Malik Zorch's voice came quietly behind him, strained, reverent, afraid.
