I listened when Preston shoved me to the side and told me to take a break, because I didn’t have the strength to argue with him.
This wasn’t anything I’d felt before. I’d been sick. Shit… I’ddied.
This was different.
It felt like something was spilling out of me with every second that passed—all the angry energy I’d had earlier in the apartment with Sephtis, all my excitement to prove to Preston that I was fine and he had no reason to worry about me.
I couldn’t seem to grab hold of it now. It was slipping through my fingers like water, and when I slumped over on the desk where I was carefully filling out paperwork, I didn’t have it in me to raise my head when I heard Preston say my name.
It was the worry in his tone that told me something was probably wrong.
The worry that told me that maybe I should have taken the day off after dying twice and learning that the entire world as I knew it was a lie.
But…
“I’m fine.” I slurred the words, and when he came forward and took my shoulder to lift me, I tried to raise my hand to stop him.
At first, my arm wouldn’t move. I couldn’tmove. The terror of that streaked through me, made something in my chest clench tight before my heart started racing.
When I tried to raise my arm again, it was like pushing through something thick—sticky, angry liquid trying to hold me down, to sink me to the bottom of the world where I’d meet the fate that I should have met a year ago when my brother died. The fate I would have happily accepted if it meant he could have stayed.
The fate Sephtis had saved me from twice.
Sephtis… fuck. The last thing I needed was to see those golden eyes as he saved me again. The last thing I needed was him suddenly appearing and showing me how much hecaredabout me when all I wanted to do was be angry with him.
It was my determination not to need him that gave me the strength to lift my arm so I could push Preston away. My triumph was short-lived, though.
I fell straight through him, spilling past his body and tumbling to the ground.
“What?”
I frowned, lifting my hand—it had gonethroughhim.
My eyes drifted up, then widened as I watched him lower my body—my prone body that was quickly losing its color—to the ground and yell for someone in the office to call 911.
Oh, shit.
“Preston, I’m fine. I—” I reached for him again and my hand went through his shoulder. “Oh… shit, oh fuck.” When I kneeled down and tried to press my fingers into my own chest, nothing happened.
Nothing except me looking down at my body and realizing somewhere in the back of my mind that I’d seen this before.
That this was exactly how Caiden had looked when I’d found him dead in his bed.
“No… no, no, no.” I scrambled back on hands and knees, wondering if I was going to hear that howling again, or if Sephtis was going to show up like he always did.
My eyes drifted down almost helplessly—he’d explained it in detail this morning. The arrow that Wren had shot through me, the fact that souls were joined together by red strings of fate. Soulmates.
Destiny.
And I could see it now, in whatever this state was. I could see the thread that trailed from my chest and led backward, toward the garage entrance.
But I couldn’t see the man at the end of it. He wasn’t here; he wasn’t magically around to save the day this time.
“Fuck, Sephtis. What did youdoto me?”
This wasn’tnormal… and even as I sat there on the ground staring at Preston doing a shit job of trying to perform CPR on my body, I could feel myself starting to grow weak.
So weak.
