“Can we leave?” The question comes out before I think it through. “If the system’s actually coming for her—can we just go?”
“Go where?” Rane shakes his head. “The Houses control everything. Every territory, every border. You can’t just disappear.”
“She did. For fifteen years.”
“And look what it cost her.”
Silence.
“What does ‘coming for her’ even mean?” I ask. “Containment? Testing? What are we actually dealing with?”
“We don’t know.” Locke starts walking. We follow. “That’s the problem. We don’t know what his father wants, what the Nightmare Order’s interest is, or how much time we have.”
“So we figure it out,” Rane says. “We keep her close. We don’t let her out of our sight.”
“And if we can’t figure it out in time?” I ask.
Neither of them answers.
The house comes into view. From the outside, everything looks peaceful. But I know better.
“We don’t let her out of our sight,” I say again. Quieter now. “Not again.”
Locke glances at me. Something shifts in his expression—not quite acceptance, but close.
“Agreed.”
As we walk inside, Vaelor’s coming down the stairs. He stops when he sees us. Kyron’s leaning against the kitchen doorway with a mug, and Beckett’s on the couch next to—
She’s sitting up.
Blanket pooled around her waist, pale hair tangled, shadows still under her eyes. Beckett’s saying something to her, low enough that I can’t hearit. She’s nodding along, but then the door closes behind us and her head turns.
She sees me.
Those pale blue eyes lock onto mine and don’t let go.
And then she smiles—small, almost nothing—and looks away like she didn’t mean to do it.
I grip the doorframe without meaning to. Just to keep from falling forward. Or maybe just to keep my shit together.
Everything I’ve been carrying for three days—the guilt, the anger, the pull I couldn’t explain—it all goes quiet. Just for a second. Just long enough for me to understand what I’ve been trying not to know.
I’m not fighting this anymore.
I don’t know what I am to her. I don’t know what I am to any of them. But I know I’m not leaving.
Not now. Not ever.
She’s awake. She’s looking at me.
And I can’t pretend I don’t feel it anymore.
Chapter 26
Nova
I don’t know where I am at first.
