THE FREE FALL ⇘ Bellamy Blake. [1]

| lx. GENESIS OF EVIL

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CHAPTER SIXTY;

GENESIS OF EVIL.

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        FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HER LIFE—RETURNING FROM THE CLUTCHES OF DEATH FELT LIKE A PUNISHMENT. Haven couldn't discern where one wound ended and where another began. Everything hurt. Everywhere. Agony lanced through the frail sutures holding her together, leaching into her marrow and settling deep within her atoms. Her shoulder throbbed with a rage that eclipsed any suffering she'd ever endured. Pins and needles scorched irritably in her fingertips, snaking their way through her left arm, marking a path of pale fire in their wake. Even the tiniest flicker of movement felt like an act of defiance against a body that pleaded to collapse under the weight of itself.

Once again, here Haven Grey Smith was—ripped from a sleep she couldn't recall surrendering to—only to awaken in yet another unfamiliar tent she had no memory of entering. She lay cocooned within a cot, smothered beneath two blankets, with a familiar jacket draped over her as a final layer of armor.

        At least her migraine was gone.

And at the edge of the cot . . .

Bellamy.

His back faced her, jacket discarded, the stretch of his spine taut and unmoving. His gaze was pinned on the tent's entrance with a vigilance too relentless to be human, daring some unseen terror to crawl through and threaten their sanctuary. The only proof that he was still among the living was the faint curl of breath that left his lips—each exhale evaporating into mist as soon as it graced the air.

        Haven's lips parted, just barely, a whisper of life clawing to escape her throat . . . and Bellamy spun to face her.

        Even amidst the fog of her exhaustion, Bellamy Blake emerged with the blistering clarity of the sun after an eternal, starless night. No matter how lost Haven was—whether buried in nightmares, tangled in the threads of fractured timelines, or scattered across the edges of existence—she would always find him.

Because she always had.

Because she always would.

Every line of Bellamy's body spoke of a war waged just beneath the surface, every muscle coiled tight with phantom dread. His eyes burned with exhaustion, bloodshot and bruised with shadows so deep they seemed etched straight into his soul.

But his face . . . god, his face.

Pale, as if life itself had abandoned him, like he had wandered too close to the edge of the world and returned only half-intact. He wore fragility as his second skin, a man crumbling in the hollow quiet, folded inward beneath the weight of things that had no name. He seemed . . . small, in a way Haven had rarely witnessed, as if time had peeled away every hardened layer, leaving only the raw effigy of the boy who was once whole.