Masuk[Adam's POV]The church smelled like lilacs.Not the cold, chemical lilacs of a funeral arrangement — the warm, living lilacs of a garden in June, the kind that climb trellises and spill over stone walls and fill the air with a sweetness so thick you can almost taste it on your tongue.I was standing at the altar.I knew this church. I had been here before. Not this version of it, but a darker one, a version where the air had tasted like duty and the flowers had been expensive props and the woman walking toward me had been Alice, but she hadn't been mine.This was different.The light was different. It came through stained glass windows that I didn't remember — not the austere, geometric patterns of the cathedral from before, but something softer, more organic. Blues and golds and greens, like a meadow filtered through cathedral glass. The light fell in pools on the stone floor, warm and shifting, and where it landed, it made everything look like it was glowing from the inside.I was
[Alice's POV]The word trailed off. His breathing was changing — slowing, but not in the good way. Not the gradual, rhythmic slowdown of a body relaxing. The irregular, uneven slowdown of a system that was losing its rhythm."Why what?" I pressed in closer to him, trying to hear, trying to keep him talking. "Why what, Adam? Tell me.""Why wouldn't you..." His lips moved, but the sound was almost inaudible. I had to put my ear next to his mouth to catch the fragments."Why wouldn't you let me... love you..."The words hit me harder than the river had. Harder than the rock. Harder than anything Lily had ever said or done. Because they weren't calculated. They weren't performed. They were the last honest words of a man who was slipping away and had decided, in whatever space remained to him, to spend them on the one thing that mattered.His eyes closed. Not a flicker this time. A full, deliberate closure, the lids settling into place like a curtain coming down."Adam." I said his name. O
[Alice's POV]Adam was able to grasp onto something. A root. A branch. Something embedded in the riverbank, just below the surface. He grabbed it, and the current pulled against us with everything it had. The force of the rushing water was ferocious and Adam's face was contorted into a grimace from the extreme effort it took to cling on.He pulled. I felt us move. Not forward, but sideways, toward the bank, toward the dark mass of earth and rock and vegetation that represented solid ground. His hand was bleeding — I could see it in the moonlight, the dark water running red from his torn fingers — but he didn't let go. He pulled again. Again. Each pull a small miracle of human will, overriding the physical reality.His hand found the bank. Solid earth. He grabbed it — a fistful of mud and roots and
[Alice's POV]We lodged against the rock. Not safely — the current was still pulling, still trying to tear us free, but the rock gave us a momentary anchor, a brief reprieve from the chaos. Adam pressed me against the rock face with his body, his arm still locked around my chest, his back to the current, taking the full force of the water on himself."I need to get the gag off," he shouted. "Alice, I need to — hold still —"His free hand came up to my face. His fingers found the edge of the tape — slick, wet, barely visible in the darkness — and he pulled. The tape came away in strips, tearing at my skin and hair. Then his fingers were in my mouth, pulling the soaked burlap free, and I retched — a violent, full-body convulsion that expelled water and fabric and bile into the river
[Alice's POV]The mercury switch had triggered. I had heard it. The circuit was closed. By every logical analysis I could perform in the two seconds between hitting the water and starting to drown, the device should have detonated on impact, or within milliseconds of the tilt switch activating. But it hadn't.The hum was gone — the electronic drone I'd felt vibrating against my sternum since the device was strapped to me stopped the moment I hit the water.Water. The water had shorted something.A connection, a relay, a pathway between the tilt switch and the detonator. The device hadn't been waterproof — or rather, it had been designed to survive rain and humidity but not full submersion, not the kind of total, violent immersion that came with falling into a
[Alice's POV]"I know about the mercury switch," he shouted.His hands were moving over the device now, his fingers tracing the casing, finding the seams, the joints, the access points."Adam's security guy has a comms link to a bomb disposal tech who's walking him through it. They're in my ear right now. I need you to stay as still as possible. Can you do that?"I stared at him. My eyes were wide, my breathing ragged through my nose, my heart hammering so hard I could feel it against the bomb casing. Every instinct in my body was screaming to move, to fight, to do something — and every instinct was also telling me that movement was death.I held still.David's fingers found
[Alice’s POV]David looked from Lily’s pale face to the bottle and the blue pills on the floor, then at me. A series of emotions flashed through his eyes: confusion, doubt, and then a cold suspicion.“What is this?” His voice sounded frighteningly low.I looked down at the pills, my mind blank. “I
[Alice’s POV]“What I see,” David said, enunciating each word, “is that my wife dropped the medicine Lily shouldn’t have taken, from her pocket, and my daughter said you gave it to Lily. Now, Lily, who almost died, is generously excusing you before falling unconscious again.”He glared at me. “Alic
[David’s POV]Alice stood up, easing Camilla onto her feet at the same time. Her movements were a bit slow, and she even staggered for a moment. I immediately wanted to support her, and when I raised my arm to lend support, she seemed to be startled. She pulled away from me.Her gaze was lowered, s
[Alice’s POV]I fetched a cup of coffee for Lily from the hospital canteen. I hoped it would help soothe her agitation.Lily was quietly sobbing when I came back to her room. She stopped crying and raised her head, her red and swollen eyes flashing with a light that was hard to decipher. She slowly







