The pinch behind my eyes sharpens, black dots rushing in as I try to keep them open, try to fight it the urge to sleep.
But just before the darkness swallows me, I manage to force out in a drowsy whisper, “Please find him.”
Chapter 48: Kane
One moment, her fingers were brushing my wrist—
The next, I’m gone.
Flitting too fast, too far, that even the shadows can’t keep up.
Not with the chaos roaring through me, emotions that don’t belong to me,can’tbelong to me.
Not just hers.Theirs.
All of them, crawling beneath my skin. Want. Guilt. Hope. Fear. Too much—it’s too much.
I don’t know how far I flit. I only stop when I hit something solid. A tree. Stone. I don’t know, but I let it take my weight.
My chest heaves, I can’t breathe.
Not like this. Not with their emotions inside me. Not with her light still laced through my shadows like a silk-threaded elixir. Warm. Soft. Addictive.
I left her.
I press my palms to the ground, trying to anchor myself physically to this realm. The forest is quiet. The kind of quiet that should calm me, but it doesn’t. It just makes everything louder.
Her voice. Her skin. The bond.
Mine.
I said it like a weapon. Threw it like a curse.
And worse, they felt it. All of them.
My rage. My want. My terror.
The rune is weakened, the bond’s been altered. Jasmine’s more open to me than ever before, and I felt everything. Her fear. Her longing. Her trust.
She gave herself to me, and I reacted by trying to own her.
Control her.
What is wrong with me?
I punch the ground hard enough to crack the stone beneath my knuckles. The pain doesn’t help.
I want to go back. I want to hold her. Apologise. Pretend none of this happened.
But it did.
I can’t go back to her like this.
I flit somewhere else, somewhere safer, even quieter.
I emerge from the dark in the bedroom where I claimed her as mine, where her rune altered, where her breath was steady and her fingers warm against my chest as I watched her sleeping form in anxious wait.
The shadows still remember, curling around the edge of the mattress like they’re waiting for her to come back. I stand there, motionless, letting the silence wrap around me, feeling the ghost of her warmth brushing my skin.
