“Does that scare you?” His voice is carefully neutral, but his shoulders are tensed, as if he’s bracing for rejection. “Do you hate me for it?”
“No.” The word comes out fierce. “But you know what I do hate? That someone was paid to murder your parents. That you discovered your power in the worst possible way. That you’ve been carrying this alone for four years, thinking you’re a monster for fighting back against someone who destroyed your world.”
His control cracks further, and for a moment I see the boy he was—lost, grieving, and discovering darkness he never knew existed inside him.
“Four years.” His hands move to frame my face, rain streaming between us, sizzling where it touches our skin. “Four years trying to understand why someone wanted them dead. Four years of being alone.” His thumbs trace my cheekbones, and there’s something deeply meaningful about each calm, precise movement. “But ever since you kissed me in the woods during the Hydra trial, you’re the only person who makes me feel...”
I wait for him to find the word, but nothing comes.
“Human?” I try.
“No. You’re the only person who makes me feelalive.”The weight of his confession hangs between us, rain pounding downlike the sky’s trying to drown us both. “You’re all I have left. And if anything ever happens to you, I’ll travel back over and over again to keep you here, with me, where you belong.”
Thunder crashes overhead, and in the flash of lightning, I see the truth written all over Logan’s face. After what happened that night with his parents, he’s terrified of losing me, too.
“Hey.” I frame his face with my hands, forcing him to meet my eyes. “I love you, and I’m going to fight like hell to stay here with you. It’s you and me now, always. I swear it.”
He blinks away what might be tears, and then he kisses me again, softer this time. Like I’m something precious he’s afraid to break. And when he pulls back, the storm in his eyes has calmed to something quieter, but no less intense.
But I’m not done yet.
“You’re not the only one who’s alone,” I tell him, needing him to understand this. “No one from my old life—not even my family—can ever know the truth about what I am. No one in the supernatural world, either. You’re the only person who knows, and who might ever know, my truth. You’re the only person I can be myself with. Which means you’re all I have now, too.”
His hands tighten on my waist, pulling me closer, as if I’m the only thing in the world to him that’sreal. “I love you, Jade,” he promises, and there’s a quiet intensity in him that makes my breath catch. “Always. I need you to believe that, and to never forget it, no matter what. Okay?”
Pain crosses his eyes, his hold on me tightening, as if he’s scared I’ll disappear at any moment.
“I swear it.” I press closer and kiss him again, trying to make him feel how much I mean it. His heart beats faster, and I melt into him, wishing we could be closer, that I could bepartof him and show him just how deeply I love him.
But not here. Not now, when we’re standing over the bodies of those who are dead because of us. Where we were targeted forsimplyexistingin their structured world where people who are different will never be welcome.
When I pull back, he resists, as if he wants to stay here, with me, up on the Crown, forever.
Part of me wants that, too. But I force myself to focus.
“We need to get out of here. And then there’s…” I pause, glancing at Thad and Oliver’s bodies, my stomach twisting at the reminder of every horrible thing that happened here tonight. “I’m guessing Oliver told Thad about your time travel ability. But why did Thad kill Oliver for it? Why not go straight to you, or to the Council? And why did Thad want to killme?And what did Oliver mean when he told Thad he wouldn’t let him get to Evie?”
Logan glances at the bodies, then back at me, resignation in his eyes.
“Thad didn’t support the Council’s methods,” he eventually says. “Oliver did. They got into arguments about it in our advanced studies course all the time. My best guess is that Oliver told him about me, or maybe Thad figured out what Oliver was hiding. As for what Oliver said about Evie, he didn’t want Evie to take the course because he didn’t want Thad’s ‘radical ideas’ planted in her mind.”
“So Thad was trying to protect you by killing Oliver, so Oliver wouldn’t go to the Council about it?” I ask. “And then you killed Thad because he was going to kill me?”
“Thaddidkill you. Multiple times.” His eyes go hard, like they did when he admitted to killing Miles. “And I’d kill him again for you. Without hesitation.”
I reach for his hand, squeezing it to show that I’m here for him, that I appreciate him, and that I love him.
But at the same time….
“We killed the wrong person.” Horror crashes through me, cold and undeniable. “Thad was trying to help. Oliver was thereal threat, the one who would go to the Council about what you can do.”
Logan’s jaw tightens. “Exactly.”
“But still… why did Thad want to killme?”
“I don’t know.” Logan shakes his head, seeming just as confused as I am. “I wish I did, but I don’t. We might never know. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that Oliver was a threat to me, Thad was a threat to you, and they’re both gone now. Just like they should be.”
He watches me, his body coiled tight, as if he’s waiting for me to fight him and tell him that what we did was wrong. That there could have been another way.
