“I don’t know. He seemed to forget when I asked if there was a message I could pass along.” He kept his back to me, but I saw his grip on the shirt tighten.
I fumbled for words. For an explanation. For something,anything,that would loosen the tense grip of uncertainty closing around us. “…He’s having a hard time trusting anyone right now.”
“Yes. There seems to be a lot of paranoia going around.”
My chest tightened at the edge in his voice.
The silence seemed to stretch for an uncomfortable eternity before he spoke again. “And what about you?” he asked, pulling his shirt on and finally turning to face me. “Do you still trust me?”
“Yes,” I said immediately. “Of course I do.”
It wasn’t a lie.
But it still felt like one.
How could I explain that, though? How could I tell him that I was irrevocably in love with him, that I trusted him more than I trusted myself...and yet I was also afraid. Afraid of what he was becoming—or maybe what he’d always been. Terrified that every step I took to put the world back together was unraveling him. Unravelingus.
He looked to the door, and panic flared in my chest again. I was relieved when he sat down beside me instead of leaving, even though he didn’t speak right away.
I reached for his hand. “I trust you,” I insisted.
I’m not sure which of us I was trying to convince more.
He pulled his hand back slightly. “And yet you’re clearly keeping something from me.”
I started to my feet, but he caught my wrist and held me in place. His grip was strong enough to hurt.
“Nova.” He squeezed even tighter. “You know something about what’s happening to my magic.”
Shadows rose instinctively around my free hand—a reflexive response to being cornered.
Then it happened: A thread of his magic reached out to meet mine like it had so many times before. Only it had…changed. It felt wrong. Itlookedwrong. It twisted itself into my shadows and began to pull them apart and then toward him, reducing them to a single point of twilight-hued energy before they vanished entirely.
It was the same thing that had happened during our battle with the Order.
I hadn’t imagined it then.
I wasn’t imagining it now.
And there was something so much more horrifying about it happeninghere, in the quiet of my room, rather than in the chaos of battle. Something more deliberate. Undeniable.
Aleks released my arm and stood up abruptly, backing away from me.
I stared at the space where my shadows had been, now just empty air.
He shook his head, a hint of panic in his eyes, as he quietly said, “Tell me what you know.”
I wanted to. But gods, Icouldn’t. I couldn’t tell him about the things Orin had told me, or the supporting evidence I’d found alongside my brother and Eamon over the past few days. If I did, I was afraid he’d leave. He’d want to protect me. He’d be gone before I could stop him.
My lungs ached. My throat burned as if alcohol had been poured down it, reminding me of those dark weeks when we’d been separated.
I couldn’t lose him again.
Icouldn’t.
“It…it’s not that I’m keeping things,” I said. “It’s just a lot has happened these past few days. There’s a lot of information I’m still trying to make sense of, and I just…”
He waited for me to finish.
