I glare at him.“Those thoughts were not for you. What else did you hear?”
“Nothing. Those were the first and only.”
The others must know we’re talking because their powers press at the edges, trying to peer in, but only Kane has managed to pierce through.
“I always knew you were our bond,” he suddenly says, aloud. The darkness of his eyes keeps me in place. “But I denied it. Thought it was a lie. A trick.”
I hold the silence, needing it to focus on my breathing.
“How do you know it isn’t?” My voice is too quiet.
“You died,” Kane says, the words so soft. “That’s what we thought. We felt it. The loss. And it felt…” His gaze drops, brows furrowed, like it pains him to look at me.
No. It’s more than that.
He can’t bear to remember it: the moment, the feeling.He can’t put it into words. But he doesn’t need to.
When his eyes sweep up to meet mine once more, I’m met by a version of Kane I’ve never known. I look into that endless stare and I know something has changed, a wall has dropped.
For the first time since we’ve met, he’s letting me in. Truly in.
He’s letting mefeel him.
I gasp, clasping my chest as cold pierces my skin, burrows into my ribs, slices my lungs and clings.
And then it comes.
The ache.
Dull. Throbbing. Unbearable.
“This…” My nails claw into my skin, desperate to rip out the agony festering there. “Thisis... what it felt like?”
I could block, alter it, latch onto another emotion to ease the pain. But I don’t want to. I want to feel it. Him.
But then it’s amplified, not by me or him, but by the others.
They’ve all dropped their walls.
I wince as I’m swept into a storm of emotions. Despair. Dread. The frantic need to find me, poisoned by the horror of what they’ll discover. The rage at being so powerful, yet absolutely powerless.
The overwhelming fear of losing me. The grief that they have.
The regret.
Gone.
Forever.
Eternity without me.
The need to soothe them, ground them, touch them—tell them I’m here.I’m right here.
“It’s real,” Kane says quietly into the silence, his gaze fixed on my cheeks now wet with tears.
All my built-up chagrin, my bitter anger, my plan for revenge—it all melts away. Because that’s how they felt when they thought I’d died. When I was in that cell. That’s how they really felt.
All of them.
