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He couldn’t! He couldn’t live at all

Janaan’s child wasn’t his

She’d forgotten him in days—days Had craved another, had opened her body to his invasion, taken his seed, wanting it to bear fruit not his

He heard soony andhis last breaths away

“All for nothing All the certainty, the invincibility in her—for worse than nothing For an illusion Not mented before her eyes

But this isn’t what I meant to do, she wanted to scream

She’d die to never see him in pain

She flew after hiered, looked down at her with the eyes of a ed

“Forgive ive ht you’d just despise me, walk away, be free of me I swear I never dreamed it would hurt you this much My baby is yours, Malek, as I a and in peace—please, Malek, please …”

The look in his eyes changed to the wild one of soht to see pouring fro with each other in her fright

“You said I had to have a family, and now I do, Malek—I do! Your child will be all the faood provider and I’ll be a goodlike my mother—please, please, never worry on that account And if you want and find it possible to participate in your child’s life in any way, you can You can do anything you want or see fit to Anything at all”

Malek looked down at Janaan, his salvation and destruction, demolished twice over With the devastation of her sacrifice, after the devastation of her attempt to drive him away

He fell to his knees before her, shaken to his foundations that she was all he’d believed and h, never have enough, never

“Hada kateer—kateer This is too ed into a dreahtmare of annihilation, and she was cleaved to hi with his, her passion a chain reaction with his, ether

Then he went ho at the poignancy of union, of reunion, of souls and bodies sundered and now remade into one