He nods, but he’s not looking at me. His gaze is fixed on a point somewhere over my shoulder.
“Shall we see where the exit leads?”
He walks to the second door before I can answer and pulls it open. Nothing happens. There’s no trap or final test. I watch him step through, and I can’t help but wonder…
Is it over between us? Does it have to be?
I feel something for him, and it’s not just lust. I’m sure of that much. But everything that has happened in the last twenty-four hours has been so intense, so compressed, that I can’t tell where adrenaline ends and real emotion begins. I need time to sit down with no death threat hanging over my head, and sort through what I feel without the pressure of survival distorting everything.
I know I broke his heart. I watched it happen. His eyes flickered and dimmed, and tears ran down his face, possibly for the first time. But there was no other way. The magic demanded truth, and the truth is that I don’t love him yet. I don’t believe you can love someone after a single day, no matter how extraordinary he is.
But that doesn’t mean love isn’t possible.
He told me he loves me, and I believe him. His emotions are young and unguarded, free of the walls I’ve spent years building around me. He feels without filtering, without second-guessing. I’m not built that way. I question everything, especially my own feelings, because I’ve seen what happens when people confuse passion for love. But I’m getting there. I can feel it growing. Something that started as attraction and curiosity has become deeper, heavier, and harder to dismiss. I just need time to understand whether it’s real, or whether twenty-four hours in deadly conditions made me mistake the relief of being alive for something more intimate. It’s easy to mistake lust for love, or love for lust.
“Are you coming?”
I snap out of it and rush after him.
“Yes, of course.”
I follow him into a wide corridor that slopes upward. The air grows warmer with each step, salt and wind replace the damp cold of the caves, and soon enough, we emerge onto a beach. The sun is up in the sky, and its warmth on my skin feels likea blessing. Thank God it’s not raining again. It’s an unusually lovely day for November in Cornwall, and I choose to take it as a sign that things are finally turning for me.
Above us, rocky cliffs jut toward the sky. The tide is low, and the sand is wet and dark where the water has pulled back.
I look back at the mouth of the cave and notice that from out here, it looks like nothing. It’s a shadow in the cliff face, a shallow indentation that wouldn’t warrant a second glance. Glamor, probably, magic that hides the opening from anyone who doesn’t already know it’s there.
I open my mouth to make an observation about the cleverness of it, but something drops on top of me. I hear pebbles scattering down the cliff, then everything goes black.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Castien
The second we emerge from the caves, I connect to the nearest phone tower and dial Yasmin’s number. I don't need a physical phone to make the call. She answers on the first ring, and I tell her to send a helicopter to our coordinates.
Before I end the call, electricity hits me from multiple directions. The sudden voltage surge tears through my internal systems and throws heavy static across my optical feed. Sparks burst from my shoulder joints and the exposed connection points at my knees.
I hear Jessa collapse behind me.
My motor functions fail, sending my heavy frame crashing down onto the wet shoreline.
I locate four wires attached to my armor. The barbed probes have lodged deep into the seams of my plating, and the continuous current disrupts my primary systems. My neural network fails to block the interference. The physical pain overwhelms my sensors, and I find myself unable to push it into background processing the way I normally do. I’ve endured pulse attacks in the past without experiencing this level of failure.
The psychological connection I share with Jessa has altered my mind, making me feel a vulnerability that lowers my physical defenses. I can find no other logical explanation for the extreme system degradation.
I turn my head and see four masked people holding the tasers that connect to me. Jessa lies on the ground a few feet away. A fifth masked man stands over her, checking her pulse. I try to get up, but electricity keeps firing through the wires, and my systems can’t stabilize.
“Is she still alive?” one of the men asks the one hovering over Jessa.
“You didn’t kill her, did you?” another says.
“She’s still breathing. Chill out, will you? I know what I’m doing,” the man checking on Jessa replies.
“Good. Because we might need her,” another voice calls out.
“Restrain him already!” someone shouts.
I watch the man hovering over Jessa pull a length of heavy chains from his backpack.
