JADE
The sheets smelllike salt and smoke.
I’ve been lying here for hours. Maybe. Time moves differently when you’re staring at a wooden ceiling and trying not to think about everything that went wrong in a single day.
Especially because when Aeolus shoved my storm into his bag and handed it to Evie, he looked at it like it was contaminated.
Curse,Callie’s voice echoes in my mind.Maybe it’s a curse.
I pull the blanket over my head like I’m five years old and hiding from monsters under the bed. Except the monster isn’t under the bed, because the monster is me. A girl who almost killed everyone she cares about because her feelings got hurt and she threw a tantrum like a child who never learned emotional regulation.
Some champion I’m turning out to be.
Eventually, the door clicks open, and soft, careful footsteps pad into the room.
Logan. Who else could it be? Definitely not Callie or Kieran—it would be seriously weird if it was Kieran—and Evie and I haven’t exactly been warm and cozy with each other since shefound out I was keeping my lightning magic secret from her for months.
The mattress dips, but Logan doesn’t try to pull the blanket down. He just lies there beside me, a careful distance between our bodies, staying completely still.
“You don’t have to talk,” he says. “I just didn’t want you to be alone.”
My breath catches in my chest. Because that’s the thing about Logan—he says things that sound simple but aren’t, things that slip past my defenses and lodge behind my ribs where I can’t dig them out.
“I almost killed you,” I say, and it comes out muffled through the blanket. “I almost killedeveryone.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Because a god showed up and ripped my storm out like he was pulling a weed,” I throw Callie’s words back at him. “It’s not exactly a ringing endorsement.”
“Pull the blanket down,” he says, far more patiently than I deserve. “Please.”
I don’t want to. I want to stay in my fabric cocoon where I don’t have to see his face or let him see mine. Where I can pretend for a few more minutes that I’m not a disaster wrapped in human skin. Well, witch skin. Whatever.
But my hands move anyway, pushing the blanket down to my chin, and then I’m looking at him in the dark.
He’s lying on his side, facing me, close enough that I can see the sharp angles of his face, the tension in his jaw, and the shadows under his eyes.
“There you are,” he says, barely in a whisper.
Two words. That’s all he gives me, and they crack me open like an eggshell, because Logan doesn’t say “are you okay” or “we should talk.” He says, “there you are,” as if finding my face under the blanket was the only outcome he cared about tonight.
“Here I am.” I try to laugh, but it comes out wrong. “Cursed Jade. Disaster Jade. A goddess’s chosen champion who needed a wind god to clean up her mess.”
“Stop.”
“Why? Callie’s right. I can’t control my power. Every time I think I’m getting better, something happens and I almost kill everyone.”
“You didn’t almost kill everyone,” he says, quiet and sure. “You lost control, and you pulled it back. That’s not failure, Jade. That’s learning.”
Then, he kisses me.
It’s not demanding or desperate. It’s just soft, slow, and quiet, and it tastes likeplease stop spiralingandI’ve got youandI love you.His mouth is soft against mine, and his hand cradles the back of my head, and for three seconds, the only thing in the world is the warmth of him and the salt of my tears between our lips.
When he pulls back, his thumb wipes the wetness from my cheek. The tenderness in the gesture is so at odds with the sharp, controlled man the rest of the world sees that my chest aches.
“I need to tell you something,” he says in the tone he only uses when what’s coming next is important. “It’s something I’ve never told anyone.”
My heart stutters. “Okay.”
