Ahead I see him. Bull form, massive, coiled strength. But here he’s still human too, half bull, half man. He watches me from across a field of embers and ash. The fire in my hands reaches out. It flows along his skin like water warming stone. I walk through the heat toward him. The flame does not burn. It soothes. It heals. It whispers his name without sound.
I wake with my chest tight, blanket plastered to my skin, hands trembling. The villa is cold now, morning light crawling over walls. I lie still for a moment, heart pounding so loud I feel it should echo off the roof. I look toward him. He lies on his sidenow, facing away from me, sheets drawn up to his waist, muscles gentle in the quiet light.
He shifts, rolling over, eyes opening to meet mine. The flicker in them lingers, that gold pulse that always fades. I realize something changed in me. A line has broken. A door opened. The flame I saw burning in dream is not just metaphor.
And I know I’m not running. Not now.
13
RAFE
The wind is warm in the hills outside Seville, carrying the scent of olive trees and dry stone, a lazy promise of summer still holding its breath. The road narrows where acorns litter broken pavement, shadows stretching long and thin across cracked asphalt. I guide the car through an archway of ancient pines, gravel spitting beneath the tires, until we reach the chapel.
It rises from the earth like something out of memory — not majestic or grand, but stubborn, refusing to vanish. Vines choke its façade, flowers bloom in cracks of stone, and the windows, half missing, let light slant in jagged beams that catch dust motes like embers in the air.
Kaleigh steps out, her boots sinking slightly into earth softened by night dew. I follow, closing the car door soft behind us, and she pauses at the threshold, turning to me with her shoulders squared. The chapel door opens on a soundless hinge, and the air inside is cooler still, as if the walls remember prayer even though silence lives here now.
The scent of moss, of damp stone, of incense long extinguished, all linger together in stillness. Pale light from thebroken windows casts stained patterns across the cracked tiles, painting the floor in gold and shadow.
I walk down the center aisle toward the altar. My footsteps echo — a soft boom, reverberating against bare walls. The altar itself is nothing more than a stone slab chipped and cracked, and above it the arch remains, half swallowed by ivy. I brush my hand along its surface, tracing fissures in the stone, fingers finding grooves carved by time. The cold of it bites through my palm.
She comes beside me quietly, slow, steady. I don’t turn to her immediately. Instead I breathe in all this: dust in sunbeams, vines clinging to lintels, crumbling columns chipped by centuries, roots threading through stone like veins. These stones remember pacts, blood, betrayal. I feel it in my bones tonight.
“This place helps me hear myself,” I say quietly, without turning. My voice scrapes the air like stone rubbed on stone. “Helps me find balance when all else insists on hurricane.” I feel her presence shift behind me, the soft sound of fabric.
She nods. “I can feel the stillness.” Her voice is soft, warm, letting in light. She steps forward to join me at the altar’s edge.
I take a deep breath. “There was a time the Pact was everything. Our souls bound not just by blood, but by purpose. We swore to protect, to balance, to harness what we are for the greater good.” I pause, turning finally to look at her. The sunlight from a fissured window glints in her eyes, and I see color shifting in them like flame in calm water. “The Crimson Pact was more than brotherhood. It was the line drawn between order and chaos in our world. Roman corrupted it. He set us against each other. He twisted the bonds until they bled.”
She listens, still, absorbing every word. The chapel walls press in, silent witnesses.
“I became the Punisher,” I continue. “The one who tracked traitors, the one who carried judgment in his fist. I was the instrument Roman used to be feared. In those days, I believed I was cleaning the rot. But it’s harder to see corruption when you are the blade.” I half-smile, bitter. “People call me monster. They say a man with my record cannot hold a heart. They forget you see one now.”
She steps closer. Dust falls from vines overhead, drifting in slanted beams like slow snow. She doesn’t pry. She lets me carry what I’ve carried, not flinch at it.
“I’m a monster,” I say. “That’s the label I wear like armor. When the beast takes me, when the horns rise and the blood calls, I’m the shape most people fear. The thing they warn children about. It doesn’t matter if my mind is still human. The monster wins the moment I give permission.”
Her eyes meet mine. There’s no fear there now. Something softer. Something offering grace.
“You’re not a monster,” she says. Her voice echoes in the empty chapel, soft and steady. “You’re a weapon misused.”
The words strike like wind against a cliff. My chest tightens. I swallow, taste grit.
She stretches a hand, brushing her fingers against the chipped stone near my palm. Then she turns and faces me. The light hits her just so, hair haloed in gold, skin pale under dawn’s glow.
“If you were a monster, you’d relish the roar. You wouldn’t tremble at your own echo,” she goes on. “You wouldn’t strap silence over grief. You wouldn’t carry volumes of hurt in your bones. You wouldn’t scramble to hide the scars because you’re afraid they’ll prove you’re broken. You carry yourself through carnage and still stand. That doesn’t make you a monster. It makes you alive.”
My breath hitches. The oath under my skin clenches like a fist trying to break free. The Seal pulses faintly, hot beneath my heart. My palm itches where she touched stone.
She moves now, stepping until she’s just inches from me, close enough I feel the heat radiating from her. I can see the rise and fall of her chest, the fleck of gold in her eyes. She holds out her hand, then lets it hover near my face. She doesn’t pull away.
“I believe you,” she says, voice low, fierce in the quiet.
My heart—a thing I haven’t let feel anything that doesn’t scream—stills. The weight in my chest cracks, wider than I ever allowed. I close the space and brush my lips to hers. Not gentle. Not tentative. It is urgent and raw, years of tension in one broken moment. Her hands find me, clutching shoulders and shirt, grounding me, holding me to human things.
We break apart slowly, breath ragged, skin humming. She smiles faintly, and I swear I see dawn reflected in her eyes.
“Stay,” she whispers.
