I watch him pace along the garden path, and something cold settles in my chest. Gray doesn’t pace. Gray stands still and observes and makes calculated decisions. This restless energy radiating from him feels wrong.
“You’ve always protected her,” I say, trying to find solid ground. “You’re the one who kept us all together when everything went to hell.”
“I fell asleep.” His voice is flat, self-recriminating. “I should have stayed awake. Should have known she might go back to that chamber.”
“We all fell asleep.”
“I don’t.” Gray’s hands clench into fists at his sides. “I never sleep through the night. I keep watch. That’s what I do. But last night I was so exhausted I didn’t even hear her leave.”
The air around him shifts—subtle at first, then more noticeable. Like a pressure change before a storm, but concentrated entirely around Gray’s body.
“What’s happening?” I ask, because something is definitely happening.
Gray looks down at his hands like they belong to someone else. “I don’t know.”
But I do. Or at least, I think I do. The same way I can sense emotional hunger in a room, I can feel whatever’s building in Gray. It’s wild and desperate and completely at odds with his usual control.
“You need to calm down,” I say carefully.
“Calm down?” Gray’s voice cracks. “Bree is missing—or replaced, or corrupted, or dead—and you want me to calm down?”
“Gray—”
“I can’t protect her if she’s not really her!” The words explode out of him, and with them comes a pressure that makes my ears pop. “I can’t save someone who doesn’t exist!”
The air in the garden goes completely still. Even the leaves stop rustling.
I take a step toward him, hands raised like I’m approaching a spooked animal. “Hey. Look at me.”
Gray’s breathing is ragged, too fast, and there’s something wrong with his eyes. They’re shifting between gray and something else—something darker, more primal.
“I failed her,” he whispers. “Whatever that thing is wearing her face, it’s there because I wasn’t strong enough to keep her safe.”
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?” Gray’s fists clench tighter. “She needed someone who would fight for her without hesitation. Someone who would burn the world down to keep her safe. Instead, she gotme.”
“She got someone who loves her.”
“Love isn’t enough.” The words come out broken, desperate. “Love doesn’t keep people from disappearing into chambers full of ash and mirrors.”
Something in his voice makes me step closer despite every instinct screaming at me to give him space. “Gray, you’re scaring me.”
He looks up at me then, and for a moment I see past the control and the careful observation to the raw terror underneath. “Good. Because I’m scaring myself.”
The pressure in the air builds again, and I realize what I’m seeing. Gray isn’t just having a breakdown.
He’s on the edge of something bigger. Something that might change him permanently.
“Whatever’s happening,” I say quietly, “we’ll figure it out. Together. Don’t leave me here thinking I’m the only one losing my mind.”
Gray stares at me for a long moment, and I can see him fighting something internal. Like there are two different versions of him warring for control.
“It’s Bree,” I say again, because I have to believe it. “It has to be Bree. Because if it’s not…”
I can’t finish the sentence. Can’t voice the fear that’s been eating at me since the moment she looked at Jace with that confident smile.
Because if it’s not Bree, then everything I thought I knew about connection and recognition and the way souls call to each other is wrong.
