Though some combination of the healing magic she'd received meant Amalia's shoulder was no longer broken, it still sent shocks of pain through her from arm to neck to chest everytime she swung it, something she had to keep doing if she wanted to run fast enough to catch Marcus. Already they were too far behind. She knew little of this Well or any of the business surrounding it—but it was enough to know that if he succeeded in obtaining its power before they could get to him, her final opportunity to kill him would become nothing more than the time and place of her own death, and Lia's too.
That, she could not allow. Gritting her teeth, she redoubled her speed, taking the makeshift stairs two at a time and reaching down to draw her chain even as she did, holding it in one hand for the time being.
No sooner had they crested the ridge than she was sweeping her eyes over the area, trying to find him. It looked like another forested path. Only one way forward—he wouldn't waste time with detours now. A short hand signal let her save her breath and tell Lia to keep to the rear at the same time. No doubt they would be upon him soon; better that they were prepared now. Loose stones flung upwards with each of their steps, light over the slick stone of the pathway.
The trees thinned as they approached the Well itself, or the clearing that it was in, at least. She could see it in the distance: a door-sized opening in a circle of stone as high as two of her. And in front of it—Marcus.
Amalia swung once, then loosed the chain. There was no way he'd missed their approach, stealth foregone in favor of sheer speed. He sidestepped the throw, veering from his course towards the opening in the vine-shrouded stone, remaining outside of it instead, where the grasses and ferns were thick and lush and the soil smelled thickly of loam and rotting plant matter.
It was a beautiful place to die.
A split second of auditory warning was all they got: fire blossomed at Marcus's fingertips, and he threw it at them, its arc wide enough to encompass Amalia and Lia both. Amalia ducked under it, throwing herself into a roll and coming up on the other side. Heat at her back and the sizzle of her own hair burning informed her she hadn't quite made it all the way, but the dragonhide protected her from the worst, and the embers in her braid fizzled out with the wind of her passage.
Lia had thrown herself backwards it seemed rather than using the dodge to close the distance on Marcus. Her roll put her near cover at the edge of the path, and she loosed an arrow that whistled over Amalia's shoulder. Marcus batted it out of the air, shattering it and sending the halves falling harmlessly on either side of him. A fierce lightning bolt was his retaliation back at Lia; she ducked behind a tree for cover, but the bolt obliterating its trunk sent out a strong enough shockwave to knock her flat on her back. She was rapidly running out of arrows, Amalia knew. She'd have to find some way to make the last few count.
But the intent of Marcus's attack was clear: temporarily remove the ranged nuisance from the fight so he could deal with Amalia without distraction.
And if that was his aim, Amalia could oblige. Better that Lia have the opportunity to align and choose her shots carefully, unhindered by more of his magic. She would simply have to create that opportunity. The time the arrows bought allowed her to close, and with her fury burning in her limbs, Amalia struck, lashing out with the knife, seeking her enemy's throat.
Marcus's fingers around her wrist brought her up short, forcing her arm away from him at an angle. He retaliated with a hard strike to the exposed side of her ribcage; Amalia's breath hissed out from between her teeth.
Rather than follow up with something more lethal, Marcus narrowed his eyes at her in amusement, black as ink beneath the pale mask. "Come now, kadan, that was utterly predictable." His fist closed, stone forming over it, and he drove it forward again.
Amalia, still in his grip, twisted away as well as she could; the blow that had been meant to crack her ribs clipped her hip instead; her shoulder shot white needles of pain through her back from the angle he held it. Marcus released her and stepped back; Amalia rolled sideways before his foot could come down on her face. It caught the edge of her singed braid instead; clenching her jaw, she blindly reached back and hacked it off with the knife, regaining her feet once she felt her remaining length of hair go slack.
Another arrow came in, perhaps quicker than Marcus expected, as his deflection this time was not half as careless as it was before. Lia's recovery had been quick, and she crept closer, drawing another arrow, leaving only one remaining in her quiver. She darted off the path into the trees, trying to quietly change up her angle while Amalia kept up the fight.
"This one's new," Marcus remarked, seemingly unconcerned with allowing her the moment to recover that it would take him to speak. "I suppose I broke the last one though, didn't I? He was already barely half an elf."
Amalia's lips pulled back from her teeth in a silent snarl. She could feel her breath pick up, each new one twanging against her ribcage like the snap of a bowstring against the wrist. She rushed again, going in low this time; Marcus sidestepped, grabbing her armor by the side of the collar as she passed and placing one of his feet to trip her. Amalia saw it coming, and so when she went to ground, she tangled her legs in his and brought him down, too.
For what felt like interminable time, they fought for the upper hand, crushing ferns, grass, and twigs against their backs in an irregular cacophony of rustling and snaps. Marcus rained several body blows down on her, only for Amalia to get a knee up in between them and pitch them over, bringing the knife down. He knocked it off course, and it dragged a heavy wound along the outside of his shoulder instead of burying itself in his throat like she'd meant it to, but she'd drawn his blood. The fingers of her free hand scrabbled at the smooth surface of his mask, cracking it more than they pulled it free, but a large chunk came away nevertheless, and she tried again with the knife, this time for his eye.
The blow never hit—Amalia was picked up off the ground and hurled backwards by a blasting spell. Pain exploded in her back as a tree stopped her flight, and she slid down to the base of it, struggling to pull in air. She'd lost her dagger somewhere in mid-flight, and a wet seeping at her leg informed her that her potions and other alchemical options were now lost as well. With her chain too far away, she now had only her hands.
So be it. If she had to strangle him and watch the life bleed slowly from his eyes, she would do it. With a smothered groan, she pushed herself to her feet.
Their struggle had brought them closer to Lia, or perhaps she'd crept there herself; she had a greater knack for stealth than kadan did. Her second to last arrow was loosed at near point-blank range, aimed for Marcus's head. He noticed her just in time to turn his face aside, with no time to spare for any kind of barrier. The arrowhead cut a gash along the side of his head, from behind his ear to his temple, eliciting an annoyed growl from him.
Lia was close enough that he turned his full attention on her rather than return to Amalia. She darted back a step, but he kept pace, his first swing narrowly missing her head. She tried to kick him away, aiming her boot for his chest, but he caught her leg, grasping her foot and calf. There was a brief moment where Lia reached for her last arrow, but she was then hurled sideways, her momentum carrying her swiftly until her back slammed into a tree.
She collapsed to the forested ground, but wasn't allowed more than a half second of rest before Marcus's hand closed around her throat and hauled her back up. She pulled Parshaara from the sheath on her thigh and stabbed for him, but the dagger found only a stone encased forearm, the fire enchantment sparking but ultimately failing to burn much of anything.
"What were you thinking, kadan? This one's not even a killer. His eyes narrowed; he squeezed Lia's neck with a flex of his gauntleted hand, hard enough to cut off her airflow entirely. "Not like you."
Amalia lunged, banding her arm around his waist and pulling all three of them back to the ground. It was enough to loosen Marcus's grip on Lia, though, and that was all she'd intended to do with it. Amalia pinned him as well as she could with her legs and rolled them over several times, trying to keep him away from Lia. She didn't have the time to see if kadan's daughter was conscious, but she was not dead, and that was enough.
Marcus stopped their motion, ripping free of her hold and seizing her by her loose hair, wrenching her upwards with him and forcing her close, close enough that she could feel his breath gusting over her cheek. The rest of the mask had fallen away, exposing the charred and burned half of his face. "Not like us."
The deepest part of Amalia knew his words for truth. They were killers, the both of them. Violence and death were part of them, sunk deep into their bones and bound in their flesh. And they'd done far too much damage to each other for the killer in either of them to be satisfied while the other still lived. His other hand gripped her jaw so hard she thought it might break; Amalia lashed blows against him with her limbs, but he was holding her too near to him for any of them to find much purchase or effect. Not so his own; the fingers around her face warmed, and she thought he might be about to burn her as kadan had burned him, but the fire never came. Instead, the stone-covered hand retracted from her hair, yanking several strands out with it, and he slammed it into her stomach with the aid of his magic. Once, twice, thrice, until her vision was blurring with involuntary tears and she couldn't draw breath. Two of her ribs gave way; blood bubbled in her throat, trickling out over her lips as she coughed weakly. She glared at him with all the anger in her—fire, ice, she had no idea any longer. The only thing she could feel with any distinctness was pain and the proximity of him, two things she associated so deeply her nightmares were made of them together.
"You're beautiful when you're dying," he murmured, his voice a lover's caress. Just as familiar—even more nightmarish. "You fight it so hard you conquered it once. I wonder what you'll look like when it conquers you." The stone hand closed over the desperate punch she threw, squeezing her knuckles until she would have screamed if she'd been able to part her lips to do it. Then he squeezed them harder, and she felt the bones grinding together, cracking and then snapping outright.
A heavy thud sounded out, and Marcus suddenly groaned in pain, his grip weakening. "Dirthara-ma!" Lia hissed hoarsely at him from Marcus's back. She'd planted her last arrow there, Amalia could see it when he turned slightly. She'd either aimed for his heart or his spine, but she'd missed both. The half of her that wasn't in a daze was clearly in a rage, hateful eyes fixated on Marcus.
She abandoned her bow and drew Parshaara again, but Marcus drew her in close before he struck, waiting until she was committed to her attack and unable to dodge. When her arms were over her head, poised to strike down with the dagger, a swift stonefist spell hurtled into her abdomen, crunching against her and tossing her back until she ended up face down on the path. She clutched where she'd been hit and writhed in pain, unable to rise. She stabbed the dagger into the earth and tried to use it as leverage to pull herself up, but her body was refusing her.
Amalia's body was refusing her, too—but this, she was accustomed to. From the place Marcus had dropped her, she grabbed his ankle, pulling back hard when he shifted his weight to step and dragging his feet out from beneath him. It was perhaps the hardest thing she'd ever done to keep him on the ground, and Amalia had lived a life full of difficult things. But she planted her knees on his arms, uncaring of where he gripped her thighs and lit both his hands on fire. Her own hands went to his throat and squeezed.
It took everything she had to cut off his air, her core weakened from the breaks in her ribs and her shoulder still protesting every exertion of her right arm. Her broken left hand was barely of any use at all, but she pressed it down into his windpipe anyway, leaning her weight against it as his spell began finally to eat through the thick hide protecting her from the flames. Perhaps they would destroy each other in this moment, she wringing the life from his neck, silencing his poisonous words once and for all and he committing her to the flames as he should have when he'd believed her dead.
Ashes could not crawl out of the ground and live again.
Live for this.
Amalia's entire body was hot: not just where his hands burned, but where her wounds throbbed and sparked, where her eyes shed burning tears, mingling with salt-slick sweat and dripping from her chin. She thought of all that she had suffered and squeezed harder, feeling the yielding press of the cartilage in his throat give way. She thought of kadan, denied his choice to fight, now and in the future, denied the wholeness of his body and the capability he had worked a lifetime to achieve. Her fingernails dug crescent furrows into his skin; his eye bulged from his head and the fire came faster, the sizzle and hiss of her own skin nothing more than a distant irritant. Only one of them had learned to endure this much pain.
She had suffered. Those one who mattered above all others had suffered. Even Lia, who she loved in a way with no good name, had suffered. And Amalia wanted—she wanted—
Her breath was ragged, short gasps for air growing shorter. Her arms shook, trembled where she pressed them down into Marcus. Her tears splashed onto his face, and for a moment, it was as though it was not ruined at all, and he blurred until she saw him again for the first time. This man who would change the course of her life forever. Who would hew her from the Qun like a block of stone, so that she could be shaped by the ocean, the tide, feel herself become sand.
"Lia," she rasped, her voice raw and harsh with too many things she did not understand. "The dagger." She would grant Marcus one thing he did not deserve. One thing he never would have granted her.
Lia's breath came in hitched gasps, but she'd managed to get her feet under her again, and stagger closer to Amalia. Blood trailed from one corner of her lips, and she cradled an arm over her abdomen, but her other hand still clutched the dagger, gripping the handle tightly. Her legs gave out when she reached them, spilling her forward onto hands and knees with a groan, but she refused to let herself go any further.
Reaching out, she tossed Parshaara within Amalia's reach.
Amalia had to use her strong hand to reach it, allowing Marcus to pull a hard breath in through his red-marked throat. He struggled under her, but for all that he was the stronger, she was the better-positioned, and even the fire in his hands weakly guttered out, leaving her with blistering red skin and charred flesh. She cared not.
Parshaara's enchantment sparked to life, bathing the dragonbone dagger in its own conflagration, and Amalia met Marcus's eyes.
"Kadan—"
"No," she hissed. "That is not what I am. Not to you. Nor you to me." The point of the dagger found his chest, singeing through the black robe he wore in the half second before Amalia leaned her weight into it, pressing it down into his heart.
He lurched, a gasp leaving him at the same moment as Amalia's sigh departed her. He stilled beneath her, and she knew. It was over.
Marcus was dead.
It was enough.
That, she could not allow. Gritting her teeth, she redoubled her speed, taking the makeshift stairs two at a time and reaching down to draw her chain even as she did, holding it in one hand for the time being.
No sooner had they crested the ridge than she was sweeping her eyes over the area, trying to find him. It looked like another forested path. Only one way forward—he wouldn't waste time with detours now. A short hand signal let her save her breath and tell Lia to keep to the rear at the same time. No doubt they would be upon him soon; better that they were prepared now. Loose stones flung upwards with each of their steps, light over the slick stone of the pathway.
The trees thinned as they approached the Well itself, or the clearing that it was in, at least. She could see it in the distance: a door-sized opening in a circle of stone as high as two of her. And in front of it—Marcus.
Amalia swung once, then loosed the chain. There was no way he'd missed their approach, stealth foregone in favor of sheer speed. He sidestepped the throw, veering from his course towards the opening in the vine-shrouded stone, remaining outside of it instead, where the grasses and ferns were thick and lush and the soil smelled thickly of loam and rotting plant matter.
It was a beautiful place to die.
A split second of auditory warning was all they got: fire blossomed at Marcus's fingertips, and he threw it at them, its arc wide enough to encompass Amalia and Lia both. Amalia ducked under it, throwing herself into a roll and coming up on the other side. Heat at her back and the sizzle of her own hair burning informed her she hadn't quite made it all the way, but the dragonhide protected her from the worst, and the embers in her braid fizzled out with the wind of her passage.
Lia had thrown herself backwards it seemed rather than using the dodge to close the distance on Marcus. Her roll put her near cover at the edge of the path, and she loosed an arrow that whistled over Amalia's shoulder. Marcus batted it out of the air, shattering it and sending the halves falling harmlessly on either side of him. A fierce lightning bolt was his retaliation back at Lia; she ducked behind a tree for cover, but the bolt obliterating its trunk sent out a strong enough shockwave to knock her flat on her back. She was rapidly running out of arrows, Amalia knew. She'd have to find some way to make the last few count.
But the intent of Marcus's attack was clear: temporarily remove the ranged nuisance from the fight so he could deal with Amalia without distraction.
And if that was his aim, Amalia could oblige. Better that Lia have the opportunity to align and choose her shots carefully, unhindered by more of his magic. She would simply have to create that opportunity. The time the arrows bought allowed her to close, and with her fury burning in her limbs, Amalia struck, lashing out with the knife, seeking her enemy's throat.
Marcus's fingers around her wrist brought her up short, forcing her arm away from him at an angle. He retaliated with a hard strike to the exposed side of her ribcage; Amalia's breath hissed out from between her teeth.
Rather than follow up with something more lethal, Marcus narrowed his eyes at her in amusement, black as ink beneath the pale mask. "Come now, kadan, that was utterly predictable." His fist closed, stone forming over it, and he drove it forward again.
Amalia, still in his grip, twisted away as well as she could; the blow that had been meant to crack her ribs clipped her hip instead; her shoulder shot white needles of pain through her back from the angle he held it. Marcus released her and stepped back; Amalia rolled sideways before his foot could come down on her face. It caught the edge of her singed braid instead; clenching her jaw, she blindly reached back and hacked it off with the knife, regaining her feet once she felt her remaining length of hair go slack.
Another arrow came in, perhaps quicker than Marcus expected, as his deflection this time was not half as careless as it was before. Lia's recovery had been quick, and she crept closer, drawing another arrow, leaving only one remaining in her quiver. She darted off the path into the trees, trying to quietly change up her angle while Amalia kept up the fight.
"This one's new," Marcus remarked, seemingly unconcerned with allowing her the moment to recover that it would take him to speak. "I suppose I broke the last one though, didn't I? He was already barely half an elf."
Amalia's lips pulled back from her teeth in a silent snarl. She could feel her breath pick up, each new one twanging against her ribcage like the snap of a bowstring against the wrist. She rushed again, going in low this time; Marcus sidestepped, grabbing her armor by the side of the collar as she passed and placing one of his feet to trip her. Amalia saw it coming, and so when she went to ground, she tangled her legs in his and brought him down, too.
For what felt like interminable time, they fought for the upper hand, crushing ferns, grass, and twigs against their backs in an irregular cacophony of rustling and snaps. Marcus rained several body blows down on her, only for Amalia to get a knee up in between them and pitch them over, bringing the knife down. He knocked it off course, and it dragged a heavy wound along the outside of his shoulder instead of burying itself in his throat like she'd meant it to, but she'd drawn his blood. The fingers of her free hand scrabbled at the smooth surface of his mask, cracking it more than they pulled it free, but a large chunk came away nevertheless, and she tried again with the knife, this time for his eye.
The blow never hit—Amalia was picked up off the ground and hurled backwards by a blasting spell. Pain exploded in her back as a tree stopped her flight, and she slid down to the base of it, struggling to pull in air. She'd lost her dagger somewhere in mid-flight, and a wet seeping at her leg informed her that her potions and other alchemical options were now lost as well. With her chain too far away, she now had only her hands.
So be it. If she had to strangle him and watch the life bleed slowly from his eyes, she would do it. With a smothered groan, she pushed herself to her feet.
Their struggle had brought them closer to Lia, or perhaps she'd crept there herself; she had a greater knack for stealth than kadan did. Her second to last arrow was loosed at near point-blank range, aimed for Marcus's head. He noticed her just in time to turn his face aside, with no time to spare for any kind of barrier. The arrowhead cut a gash along the side of his head, from behind his ear to his temple, eliciting an annoyed growl from him.
Lia was close enough that he turned his full attention on her rather than return to Amalia. She darted back a step, but he kept pace, his first swing narrowly missing her head. She tried to kick him away, aiming her boot for his chest, but he caught her leg, grasping her foot and calf. There was a brief moment where Lia reached for her last arrow, but she was then hurled sideways, her momentum carrying her swiftly until her back slammed into a tree.
She collapsed to the forested ground, but wasn't allowed more than a half second of rest before Marcus's hand closed around her throat and hauled her back up. She pulled Parshaara from the sheath on her thigh and stabbed for him, but the dagger found only a stone encased forearm, the fire enchantment sparking but ultimately failing to burn much of anything.
"What were you thinking, kadan? This one's not even a killer. His eyes narrowed; he squeezed Lia's neck with a flex of his gauntleted hand, hard enough to cut off her airflow entirely. "Not like you."
Amalia lunged, banding her arm around his waist and pulling all three of them back to the ground. It was enough to loosen Marcus's grip on Lia, though, and that was all she'd intended to do with it. Amalia pinned him as well as she could with her legs and rolled them over several times, trying to keep him away from Lia. She didn't have the time to see if kadan's daughter was conscious, but she was not dead, and that was enough.
Marcus stopped their motion, ripping free of her hold and seizing her by her loose hair, wrenching her upwards with him and forcing her close, close enough that she could feel his breath gusting over her cheek. The rest of the mask had fallen away, exposing the charred and burned half of his face. "Not like us."
The deepest part of Amalia knew his words for truth. They were killers, the both of them. Violence and death were part of them, sunk deep into their bones and bound in their flesh. And they'd done far too much damage to each other for the killer in either of them to be satisfied while the other still lived. His other hand gripped her jaw so hard she thought it might break; Amalia lashed blows against him with her limbs, but he was holding her too near to him for any of them to find much purchase or effect. Not so his own; the fingers around her face warmed, and she thought he might be about to burn her as kadan had burned him, but the fire never came. Instead, the stone-covered hand retracted from her hair, yanking several strands out with it, and he slammed it into her stomach with the aid of his magic. Once, twice, thrice, until her vision was blurring with involuntary tears and she couldn't draw breath. Two of her ribs gave way; blood bubbled in her throat, trickling out over her lips as she coughed weakly. She glared at him with all the anger in her—fire, ice, she had no idea any longer. The only thing she could feel with any distinctness was pain and the proximity of him, two things she associated so deeply her nightmares were made of them together.
"You're beautiful when you're dying," he murmured, his voice a lover's caress. Just as familiar—even more nightmarish. "You fight it so hard you conquered it once. I wonder what you'll look like when it conquers you." The stone hand closed over the desperate punch she threw, squeezing her knuckles until she would have screamed if she'd been able to part her lips to do it. Then he squeezed them harder, and she felt the bones grinding together, cracking and then snapping outright.
A heavy thud sounded out, and Marcus suddenly groaned in pain, his grip weakening. "Dirthara-ma!" Lia hissed hoarsely at him from Marcus's back. She'd planted her last arrow there, Amalia could see it when he turned slightly. She'd either aimed for his heart or his spine, but she'd missed both. The half of her that wasn't in a daze was clearly in a rage, hateful eyes fixated on Marcus.
She abandoned her bow and drew Parshaara again, but Marcus drew her in close before he struck, waiting until she was committed to her attack and unable to dodge. When her arms were over her head, poised to strike down with the dagger, a swift stonefist spell hurtled into her abdomen, crunching against her and tossing her back until she ended up face down on the path. She clutched where she'd been hit and writhed in pain, unable to rise. She stabbed the dagger into the earth and tried to use it as leverage to pull herself up, but her body was refusing her.
Amalia's body was refusing her, too—but this, she was accustomed to. From the place Marcus had dropped her, she grabbed his ankle, pulling back hard when he shifted his weight to step and dragging his feet out from beneath him. It was perhaps the hardest thing she'd ever done to keep him on the ground, and Amalia had lived a life full of difficult things. But she planted her knees on his arms, uncaring of where he gripped her thighs and lit both his hands on fire. Her own hands went to his throat and squeezed.
It took everything she had to cut off his air, her core weakened from the breaks in her ribs and her shoulder still protesting every exertion of her right arm. Her broken left hand was barely of any use at all, but she pressed it down into his windpipe anyway, leaning her weight against it as his spell began finally to eat through the thick hide protecting her from the flames. Perhaps they would destroy each other in this moment, she wringing the life from his neck, silencing his poisonous words once and for all and he committing her to the flames as he should have when he'd believed her dead.
Ashes could not crawl out of the ground and live again.
Live for this.
Amalia's entire body was hot: not just where his hands burned, but where her wounds throbbed and sparked, where her eyes shed burning tears, mingling with salt-slick sweat and dripping from her chin. She thought of all that she had suffered and squeezed harder, feeling the yielding press of the cartilage in his throat give way. She thought of kadan, denied his choice to fight, now and in the future, denied the wholeness of his body and the capability he had worked a lifetime to achieve. Her fingernails dug crescent furrows into his skin; his eye bulged from his head and the fire came faster, the sizzle and hiss of her own skin nothing more than a distant irritant. Only one of them had learned to endure this much pain.
She had suffered. Those one who mattered above all others had suffered. Even Lia, who she loved in a way with no good name, had suffered. And Amalia wanted—she wanted—
Her breath was ragged, short gasps for air growing shorter. Her arms shook, trembled where she pressed them down into Marcus. Her tears splashed onto his face, and for a moment, it was as though it was not ruined at all, and he blurred until she saw him again for the first time. This man who would change the course of her life forever. Who would hew her from the Qun like a block of stone, so that she could be shaped by the ocean, the tide, feel herself become sand.
"Lia," she rasped, her voice raw and harsh with too many things she did not understand. "The dagger." She would grant Marcus one thing he did not deserve. One thing he never would have granted her.
Lia's breath came in hitched gasps, but she'd managed to get her feet under her again, and stagger closer to Amalia. Blood trailed from one corner of her lips, and she cradled an arm over her abdomen, but her other hand still clutched the dagger, gripping the handle tightly. Her legs gave out when she reached them, spilling her forward onto hands and knees with a groan, but she refused to let herself go any further.
Reaching out, she tossed Parshaara within Amalia's reach.
Amalia had to use her strong hand to reach it, allowing Marcus to pull a hard breath in through his red-marked throat. He struggled under her, but for all that he was the stronger, she was the better-positioned, and even the fire in his hands weakly guttered out, leaving her with blistering red skin and charred flesh. She cared not.
Parshaara's enchantment sparked to life, bathing the dragonbone dagger in its own conflagration, and Amalia met Marcus's eyes.
"Kadan—"
"No," she hissed. "That is not what I am. Not to you. Nor you to me." The point of the dagger found his chest, singeing through the black robe he wore in the half second before Amalia leaned her weight into it, pressing it down into his heart.
He lurched, a gasp leaving him at the same moment as Amalia's sigh departed her. He stilled beneath her, and she knew. It was over.
Marcus was dead.
It was enough.