On the eve of the circle, with the high priestess listening and the hunger path pulsing like a vein in the dark, it wasn’t certainty.
But it was enough to keep moving.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The morning of the circle began with the sound of Keegan not breathing right.
Not exactlynotbreathing, just… catching. Like his lungs were snagging on something I couldn’t see.
I lay still, eyes half-open, watching the soft rise and fall of his chest. In sleep, some of the edges usually left him. He always looked younger, less haunted, more like the man who might’ve existed if curses and Hunger Paths didn’t lurk in the corners of his life.
Today, the curse was sitting closer.
His skin was a shade paler than usual, as if someone had turned down the saturation just on him. The dark circles under his eyes cut deeper hollows than they had in weeks. A faint shadow bruised his cheekbones, not actual discoloration, but that strange, unreal darkness that came from inside the magic itself.
Every few breaths, his chest hitched. It wasn’t violent, but it was wrong. Like the air had teeth.
The last few weeks had lulled me into something dangerously close to hope where his curse was concerned. He’d been… better. Not healed, never that, but steadier. The shadowshad loosened their grip. His nightmares had faded from blood and moonlight to something more mundane.
I’d known better than to believe it meant the curse had subsided. It had just been waiting. Saving its worst for the important day, because of course it had to be that way.
He made a small sound, barely audible. His fingers twitched against my waist like he was reaching for something.
“Hey,” I whispered. “You’re snoring in existential dread. That’s my job.”
His eyes fluttered, then opened. Even hazy with sleep, they went straight to me, searching my face.
“Morning,” he rasped. His voice sounded like gravel that had forgotten how to be water.
“Morning,” I said. “On a scale of one to ‘the universe is terrible,’ how are you?”
“Mm.” He blinked slowly. “Somewhere between coffee and doom.” He shifted, propping himself on one elbow. The motion cost him. I saw it in the way his jaw tightened, how his breath stuttered once before evening out. “You?”
“Somewhere between fine and hysterical,” I said. “So, you know. Tuesday.”
He stared at me for a long second, then huffed. “You’re shaking.”
I looked down at my hands. They were, in fact, vibrating like I’d mainlined espresso.
“It’s ambient,” I said. “Like the Ward. Decorative tremors.”
He reached over and wrapped his hand around mine, warm and solid despite the paleness. The shaking slowed just a little.
For a heartbeat, if I didn’t think about the time, the date, the circle, Gideon, the priestess, this could almost be a normal morning.
Almost.
He studied me, that keen, quiet way he had, like I was something written in another language he’d half-learned and wanted to get right.
“You didn’t sleep much,” he said.
“Neither did you.”
“Mine’s normal,” he said.
I gave him a look. “Your normal is cursed by a murder moon.”
He made a noncommittal noise and looked away, toward the ceiling.
