I look down at Elias—alive, fierce, compassionate enough to feel sorrow for a being that frightened him.
The Solstice drums like thunder in the distance, wild and unaware.
The Shade is out there, and I finally understand the truth I’d been refusing to face.
What I feel isn’t fear anymore. It’s pity. But until I know more—until I can be sure it won’t hurt Elias or anyone else under my protection—my duty is clear.
Whatever the Shade is searching for, it will not take Elias.
Not now.
Not ever.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
ELIAS
I wake slowly,the way you do after a day that has wrung you out so thoroughly your body decides rest is nonnegotiable.
For a few blessed seconds, there’s only warmth and weight and the steady presence of Boone beside me. His arm is heavy across my middle, anchoring me in place, his breathing deep and even. The warded shelter is quiet in that early-morning way—no drums, no laughter, just the low, content hum of Yellowstone holding itself together.
Then memory creeps back in.
Three feet of charged air. Pale skin that swallowed light. Eyes that looked at me like I was impossibly rare and unreachable.
You carry a resonance.
My chest tightens.
I’d slept better than I had any right to, dreamless and deep, but waking brings the thoughts flooding back in. The Shade’s voice hadn’t been cruel. Not hungry. Just… tired. Lonely in a way that sat heavy and vast, like a traveler who had been wandering too long without a place to stop.
I feel sorry for it.
The realization lands with a complicated mix of guilt and compassion. It terrified me, yes—but underneath that fear hadbeen grief. Loss. Searching. A being so cut off from land and echo and connection that it had followed power across oceans, hoping something might answer back.
And then there was what it had said.
You walk between thresholds without knowing their names.
My stomach flips.
“I can hear you thinking,” Boone murmurs.
I startle, twisting slightly to look at him. His eyes are open now, dark and steady, a small curve to his mouth that says he’d been awake longer than he let on.
“I didn’t realize you were awake,” I admit.
“I was enjoying listening,” he says. “But you’re loud this morning.”
I huff a quiet laugh. Then, sobering, I turn more fully toward him. “I keep thinking about the Shade.”
His arm tightens fractionally. Not possessive—protective. “I figured.”
“It was so… lost,” I say softly. “And what it said about me—about calling to it. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t mean to.”
“I know,” Boone says immediately. “You didn’t summon it. Youarejust… noticeable.”
“That’s not comforting.”
