Because whatever’s coming next . . . it’s not just history. It’s his future. Our present.
My reality.
Thane’s gaze slides to mine, slow and deliberate.
“A couple of days after I first started feeling the bond . . . ” he begins. His voice cracks—rough now, like the words fight him on the way out. “ . . . I felt something else stirring.”
His eyes stay on me. Watching. Measuring. Waiting to see if I flinch.
“I figured it was just the bond. The connection. New magics waking in my body. Strange sensations. Flickers of something I couldn’t name.”
He swallows hard.
“It made sense. You are the Spiritborn. Everything about this was new. Unpredictable.”
A pause.
“But then . . . one day . . . ”
His voice dips. Low. Ragged.
“Shadows curled from my fingers.”
Silence.
“And I knew.”
He doesn’t have to explain. The air changes around the words and the world narrows to this moment. My hand tightens around the glass until it aches, until I’m afraid it will shatter in my grip.
“I knew the curse had awakened in me.”
The bond pulses. Hard. Sharp. Like itfeelsthe words as much as I do. Thane’s jaw tightens. Not with anger. With fear.
“I think . . . maybe the bond woke it. Reached into something buried so deep I didn’t feel it before. And pulled it to the surface.”
He looks away then, like he can’t bear to see my reaction. But I feel it. Through the bond. Through the silence.
He’s terrified.
Not just of the magics. But of what it might mean forme.Forus.
And then Thane looks at me. Reallylooks.
What’s in his eyes steals the breath from my lungs. A sorrow carved so deep it doesn’t bleed anymore. It just sits there. Heavy. Unspoken.
“I was afraid,” he says quietly. “Afraid of what it meant for you—if we share this bond . . . and the curse in me now. I saw what it did to my mother. I watched it take her mind piece by piece. And when I felt it stir in me—I knew I couldn’t let you be anywhere near it.”
His voice catches. Just slightly. But I hear it.
“I’m still afraid.”
He drops his gaze for a moment, then lifts it again, and this time it’s all there. Everything he’s held back.
“Fuck.”
The word slips out—low, rough, torn from somewhere deep.
“That’s why I tried to walk away, to put space between us. I thought maybe if I pulled away—if I kept you at arm’s length—that maybe I could protect you . . . from what’s in me.”
