Silence wasn’t peaceful. It was suffocating. Sharp. Deafening. The kind of silence that meant someone was either dead or about to be. Noa woke up gasping, throat full of smoke and lungs on fire, ash clinging to his lips like soot from a last prayer. Everything burned. His skin, his eyes, his chest especially his chest. Not from the explosion, but from the fact that the body he’d thrown himself over wasn’t moving.

“Alessio,” he rasped, coughing hard enough to see stars. “Alessio fuck ...