The cold stillness of the cave pressed in around me as I stood, trembling, over Ash’s lifeless body. His blood stained the stone beneath him, dark and unyielding. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe as I stared at the still form of the man I had once loved. His chest no longer rose and fell with the rhythm of life, and his eyes, once full of fire and defiance, had dulled.
I felt the sting of hot tears in my eyes, the overwhelming flood of emotions that I had buried for so long crashing through me. My hands shook as I knelt beside him, the weight of what I’d done suffocating me. He had been everything to me—once. And now, I had ended it. I had ended him.
“Why?” The question slipped from my lips, broken, desperate. “Why did it have to end like this?”
I touched his cold cheek, my fingers tre
