"To stop her." A wet, rattling cough tore through him; fresh blood sprayed across his lips, black in the firelight, flecked with foam. His eyes—those impossible amethyst eyes—never wavered from hers. "And to avenge this. All of it. Every drop of blood they've spilled. Every life they've taken. Phei is the key, little sister. He's the only one who can."
The heat was no longer creeping. It was rising. A living thing now, pressing against her skin, singeing the fine hairs on her arms, drying the blood on her palms into sticky crusts. Flames licked at the undercarriage, hungry, patient, finding every puddle of leaking fuel and turning it into promise.
The air tasted like scorched metal and salt and burning hair.
They had minutes. Maybe less.
"We need to go." She yanked at him again, harder, desperate, nails digging into his wrist as if she could pull life back into him through sheer will. "Both of us, Seiryū, please—"
He shoved her.
