"If we survive this," I say slowly, "if we manage to bring down Webb and reform The Silent and live to see the other side—I'll look for answers then. About my mother. About what really happened to my father. About all the things they tried to make me forget."
"We'll look together."
"You don't have to—"
"I know I don't have to." Elliot shifts, propping himself up to look at me in the dim light. "But that's what partners do. They share the burdens. The mysteries. The pain." His hand finds mine under the blankets. "You carried me out of that facility. Let me carry something for you too."
I don't have words for what I'm feeling. The tightness in my chest, the burn behind my eyes that I haven't experienced since childhood.
"Okay," I manage.
"Okay." He settles back down, tucking himself against me like he belongs there.
Maybe he does.
Maybe we both do.
"Jace?"
"Yes?"
"I'm glad you found me at the auction. I'm glad you broke whatever rule made you take me home. I'm glad that whatever's wrong with you is wrong in exactly the way that matched what's wrong with me."
I think about the night I saw him on the platform. The way something in me shifted, clicked, realigned around a new center of gravity. The way I moved before I calculated, acted before I analyzed.
The first truly irrational decision I've ever made.
The best decision I've ever made.
"I'm glad too," I say.
He presses his lips to my chest, a soft kiss over my heart.
"Goodnight, Jace."
"Goodnight, Elliot."
He falls asleep with his hand still pressed over my heart.
I stay awake for hours, watching the moonlight move across the ceiling, listening to him breathe. Outside, snow falls, soft and silent, blanketing the world in white.
Finally, sleep catches me, just as I look at the time and realize Jinx never texted me.
Chapter Eighteen: Elliot
ThreedayspassbeforeI'm ready.
Three days of sleeping twelve hours at a stretch, of eating meals Landon prepares with quiet determination, of sitting by the fire and letting my body remember what safety feels like. Three days of Jace beside me, around me, never more than arm's reach away.
Three days of wanting.
It starts small. A brush of fingers against my hip. The weight of his arm across my waist when we sleep. The way he looks at me when he thinks I'm not paying attention.
By the third night, the wanting has become overwhelming.
We're alone in the cottage. Briar and Landon left that morning to buy a second property under a shell company, establishing separate locations in case one is compromised. Jinx went back to the Ministry, leaving Jace and me with nothing but surveillance feeds and each other.
The fire has burned low. Orange light flickers across the walls, painting shadows that shift and dance. Jace sits on the edge of the bed, pulling off his boots, his back to me.
