And that’s when the room fills with golden light.
It happens so fast, I barely have time to process it. One moment, we’re standing in my office with only the fluorescent overhead for illumination. The next, something bright and warm floods through the broken door, washing over us like a wave of sunshine.
Robbie goes rigid against me. His whole body locks up, every muscle seizing at once, and the knife clatters from his fingers to the floor.
“What—” His voice comes out strangled, barely recognizable. “What’s happening to me? I can’t move. Why can’t I move?”
I don’t have an answer. I don’t know what’s going on any more than he does. All I know is that his arm is still wrapped around my waist, but his grip has loosened enough that I might be able to pull free if I tried.
“No.” Robbie’s head jerks to the side like he’s listening to something I can’t hear. His face contorts, cycling through confusion and fear and rage in rapid succession. “No, I won’t. She’s mine. She belongs to me. You can’t have her.”
A pause. His body trembles, fighting against whatever invisible force has locked his muscles in place.
“I don’t care what you are,” he snarls at the empty air. “I don’t care what you want. She’s coming home with me, and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do to stop—”
He cuts off mid-sentence as his body seizes again. A sound escapes his throat, something between a gasp and a scream, and the black veins on his neck start to pulse faster than before. Brighter. Like something is burning them from the inside.
“Stop it.” His voice has changed now, all the rage replaced by naked terror. “Please, stop. It hurts. It hurts so much. I’ll do anything, just make it stop.”
Another pause. Another one-sided conversation with something I can’t see or hear. Robbie’s face goes pale beneath the web of dark veins, and tears stream down his cheeks.
“Fine.” The word comes out through gritted teeth, forced and unwilling. “Fine, I’ll let her go. Just make it stop. Please. I’m begging you.”
His arm falls away from my waist like a puppet whose strings have been cut. I stumble forward, putting as much distance between us as the small office allows, and spin around to face him.
Robbie stands frozen in the middle of the room with his arms hanging limp at his sides. The black veins are still there, still pulsing, but he makes no move to grab me again. His eyes are fixed on something behind me, something near the door, and whatever he sees there terrifies him more than losing me ever could.
“Fern!” Connor’s voice cuts through the haze, and I hear wood splintering as he forces his way through what’s left of the door. “Fern, are you okay? Talk to me.”
I try to answer him. I try to tell him that yes, I’m okay, I’m fine, Robbie let me go, and I don’t know why, but I’m not going to question it. But my legs have stopped working. The adrenaline that’s been keeping me upright drains away all at once, leaving nothing but exhaustion and relief in its wake. I feel myself starting to crumple, my knees buckling beneath me.
Connor catches me before I hit the ground.
His arms wrap around me, strong and warm and impossibly gentle for someone so large, and he lowers us both to our knees on the cold tile floor. I can feel him shaking against me. Or maybe that’s me. It’s hard to tell where I end and he begins anymore.
“I’ve got you,” he assures me. “I’ve got you. You’re safe now. He can’t hurt you anymore.”
“Connor—”
“I’m so sorry.” He pulls back just enough to look at my face, and I’m startled to see moisture gathering in his eyes. Connor, who always seems so strong, so unshakeable. Connor, whom I’ve never seen cry. “I’m so sorry, Fern. I promised you’d be safe here. I swore on my life to protect you, and I failed. He got to you anyway. He hurt you anyway, and I wasn’t here to stop it.”
I reach up and press my palm against his cheek. His skin is so warm beneath my fingers, and a day’s worth of stubble scratches against my palm. He leans into the touch like a man starving for contact, and something in my chest aches at the sight.
“You’re here now,” I tell him. “You came for me.”
“Not fast enough. I should have been faster. I should have—”
“You came.” I manage a weak smile despite everything. “I’m safe now, aren’t I? You said so yourself. I’m safe because of you.”
“Fern, your throat. Your face. He hurt you, and I—”
“I’m okay, Connor.” I stroke my thumb across his cheekbone, wiping away a tear he probably doesn’t even realize he’s shed. “I’m okay. I’m alive. And that’s because you didn’t give up. You broke down that door even when everyone told you to wait.”
He doesn’t look convinced. His gaze travels over my face, taking stock of every injury—the bruise on my cheek, the thin line of red across my throat where Robbie’s knife bit too deep. I can see the guilt eating at him, the self-recrimination that’s going to haunt him for days if I don’t stop it now.
“It’s not your fault,” I say firmly. “None of this is your fault. Robbie is sick. Something happened to him, something I don’t understand, and it made him worse than he’s ever been. But you found me. You came for me. That’s what matters. That’s all that matters.”
“If anything had happened to you—”
