“No.” She stares down at her untouched drink, and I want to reach for her so badly it hurts. “But it’s more than anyone else has given me these past eight days.”
The firelight turns her hair to gold, and warmth pools at the base of my skull and spreads forward, slow and sweet, my vision softening at the edges.
A golden-haired girl in Naples is staring up at me with those same hopeful eyes, thanking me for listening when no one else would. My hand settles on the small of her back as I tell her she deserves so much more than the loneliness she’s been carrying, and she’s melting into my chest because no one’s been this gentle with her in years, and I can taste her pulse before my mouth even reaches her throat.
“Tobias?” a voice cuts through the haze—Avery, soft and concerned—and I dig the spike of my ring into my thumb until blood wells up and Naples dissolves and Avery Chambers is reaching forward to touch my arm as if touching me is the most natural thing in the world.
The moment she makes contact, my brain stops working.
Because people don’t touch me. They keep their hands at their sides and a careful three feet of distance between us, as if one simple brush of skin is an invitation for me to enter their mind and dig out their deepest secrets.
But Avery’s hand is on my arm, warm through my sleeve, and she’s not flinching. She’s holding on, her brow creased with concern, her eyes searching my face like I’m the one who needs saving.
Salvatore goes quiet.
Not pressing, not prowling, not seeping through the cracks. He’s just quiet in a way he hasn’t been all night, as if Avery’s touch pushed him back behind his walls more effectively than the ring’s spike or the counting or three years of therapy ever have.
I stare at her fingers on my arm and try to breathe.
Then she pulls back so quickly I’m not sure she was ever there at all.
Of course she does. I don’t know why I expected anything else.
“People don’t usually thank me for disappointing them,” I say, attempting and probably failing to lighten the weight of whatever just passed between us.
“You didn’t disappoint me. You were honest.” Her eyes find mine again, steady and searching, and I have to remind myself to breathe. “Everyone else keeps telling me what they think I want to hear. You told me what you actually believe.”
The party noise swells around us, a drunken cheer erupting from near the bar, but it sounds muffled and distant, as if this pocket of the obsidian cave has decided to belong to the two of us and no one else.
“You said the bond feels wrong.” I choose each word carefully, aware that one wrong move could cause damage I can’t undo. “Have you told anyone else?”
“Who would I tell?” The bitterness in her voice catches me off guard, because nothing about Avery reads as bitter. She reads as soft and steady—the kind of person who absorbs everyone else’s pain and forgets to mention her own. “His sister’s barely holding it together. His friends keep looking at me like I’m supposed to have answers. And the Council...” She gestures vaguely at me. “No offense.”
“None taken.” My mouth quirks, because she’s right.
But the splinter in my mind is twisting deeper now, because she just confirmed what I suspected during her interview.
No one’s listening to her. No one’s taking her seriously. She’s been telling anyone who’ll listen that her bond feels wrong, and every single one of them has handed her the same useless answer and moved on. They’re counting on her being dismissed as emotional, on the official explanation being tidy enough that no one looks twice.
They’re almost certainly right, because the Council is very good at not looking twice when looking twice would be inconvenient.
But I’m looking at her now, and her eyes are bright with unshed tears she’s too proud to let fall, and the next official line won’t come, because my mouth has apparently decided that honesty is more important than self-preservation tonight.
“For what it’s worth,” I say, and the words feel like stepping off a ledge, but I don’t care, because all I care about right now is continuing to be close to her. “I don’t think you’re imagining the wrongness you’re feeling.”
Her eyes go bright, and she leans closer, and the six inches between us feel like the only distance left in the world.
Because Salvatore hasn’t made a sound since she touched my arm.
And I don’t know what that means, but I do know this—standing beside Avery Chambers right now feels like the first safe place I’ve had in three years, and I never want this moment to end.
JADE
Callie’s makeupis smudged around the eyes. Her hair, usually perfect, looks like she’s been running her hands through it, and she’s clutching her drink like a crutch.
“Callie,” Logan says, sounding perfectly neutral.
“Don’t.” She holds up her free hand, the one wearing the promise ring Logan gave her years ago. “I’m not here to start anything. I just...” She takes a long drink, grimacing as it goes down. “I wanted to ask Jade a question.”
