If I turn inward and focus hard enough, I can feel the echo of her heart beating right alongside mine in my chest.
Through my haze of wonder, I’m only dimly aware of Noa gasping, of her teeth finally releasing my neck as the bond finishes knitting itself whole inside her. I don’t move, just hold her through every tremor while I bask in the simple, overwhelming truth.
She’s mine.
I’m hers.
But I barely have time to savor it before something in my head cracks.
Accompanied with something that sounds like shattering glass, pain detonates behind my eyes with such a violent force, the air in my lungs abandons me completely. Gasping, my vision wavers and stars burst across it. I have to battle against the instinct screaming to curl into myself, to fold against the pain, that I may find relief there.
Somewhere through it, I hear the sound that comes from her. Distressed and wrong. She jerks in my hands, her body turning into stone where I’m still clutching her cheek and the unmarked side of her throat.
In a desperate bid to clear my vision, I see them appear.
Threads.
They emerge from our skin. Blue and gold, they shimmer as they weave around us, sliding over our bare skin like living things. Serpentine-like magic, knotting and twisting with deliberate intent, I innately recognize its crafter.
Thalassa.
My pain-riddled, fracturing mind barely shapes her name when the threads begin to constrict. They squeeze, crankingtighter with every second that passes, until breathing at all begins to feel impossible.
Through our new bond, I feel Noa’s panic as if it’s my own spike in answer.
They’re slowly suffocating her too.
Right on the cusp of unconsciousness, fingers and lips buzzing from the lack of oxygen, and my vision tunneling toward black, the strands of magic snap loose. One second they’re crushing us, tightening without mercy. The next, they’re gone, leaving my body reeling from their abrupt absence.
I drag in air, harsh and ragged, lungs burning as they fight to refill. My lips shape Noa’s name, the instinct to call out to her, the desperate need to hear her voice, rooted too deep to ignore. Sound never comes. It catches in my throat and stays there because the pain in my head reaches a fever pitch and confuses everything in its path. Thought collapses. Awareness thins. I can’t hold on.
The last thing I’m aware of before darkness swallows me is Noa through the bond. Terrified, but still alive.
And then there’s nothing.
Chapter 39
Noa
I’m home.
The recognition hits before anything else does, before my mind can truly finish waking, because these walls already know me. The healer’s cabin looks exactly as it always did back when it helped raised me. The knotty, wide, plank pine floors rough from years of use. The stone hearth anchoring the open-plan layout with the ever-present bundles of dried herbs strung above it, making the air smell of rosemary, chamomile, and something else I can’t name. The fire is already burning behind the metal screen, filling the space with a welcoming orange glow.
It looks and feels the same.
But it’s not.
Because I know I’m not really physically here.
The edges of the room shift just enough to confirm this and make my stomach tip. Everything feels a beat off, delayed in a way it shouldn’t be, as if the world hasn’t caught up with itself yet. It’s a sensation I recognize immediately. I’ve felt it before. In those in-between places I wake up in. The dreams left by Mom, or the memories she planted deep enough that I wouldn’t find them until I needed them.
It’s different this time, though.
There’s no suffocating dread curling in my chest. No warning hum under my skin. The air itself is light, easier to breathe. And when I look around, the details hold. They staywhere they are. They don’t blur or fall apart when I focus on them.
The heat of the lit fire warms the skin of my exposed arms. That’s new too. Usually in these ‘dreams’, I’m nothing more than a witness. A ghost without access to sensation. Gingerly, afraid to be ripped away before I get a chance to understand what’s happening, I lift my bare foot and take a small step forward. Nothing happens. The ground isn’t ripped away from me—I’m not thrown violently backward into another memory. I remain firmly planted in the heart of my childhood home.
My heart gives a slow, aching thud as a sense of homesickness settles on my shoulders. I’m thankful to be here, even if it’s only an echo left in my mind, but I mourn the real thing at the same time. Caught between the two emotions, I forget for a second to be on guard.
