THE TRUTH THAT BLEEDS
Blood.
It spilled too fast. Too vivid. The color of things you can’t take back.
Elias gasped as he collapsed into the dust, his shirt already blooming with red. The envelope—the real final page—fluttered from my hand like a broken wing and landed beside him, smearing his blood.
“No!” I dropped to my knees, pressing my hands against his wound. “Stay with me—don’t you dare—”
His eyes fluttered, glassy and unfocused. “Tell… the truth…”
Nyra shouted something behind me—orders, maybe. Footsteps pounded. Jules was crouched nearby, shaking but uninjured. Somewhere above, the sound of boots retreating across clay tiles told me what I already knew.
Dorian was gone.
Again.
Coward.
Murderer.
Elias exhaled one final time, and everything in me snapped.
The man who coul
