"I'm so sorry, baby... I didn't know—I didn’t know the spell would take you away from me?" It should have taken me instead." He kept holding her while ugly crying his eyes shut like a baby, and then all of a sudden—
"Kael? What are you talking about?" She said with her face stuffed in his chest. Her voice was deep and croaky.
“You’re… alive?”
Mallory yawned, and the smell of alcohol went straight to Kael’s nose. “Why wouldn’t I be? She tried to sit up, wobbled, and flopped back against his chest. “Oops. Think I had too many.”
Kael stared at her for three full seconds.
Then he started crying again. He buried himself against her body and hugged her so tightly.
"Wait, you really thought I died?"
“Yes”, he nodded, half-laughing, half-sobbing. “I thought—I thought I came
