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I’d had some vague idea about running out there and talking, but my words didn’t work and all I could do was run right to him. He caught me before I landed against him, which meant I landed against him anyway. There were two seconds of his body tensing, then the moment I’ll never forget. His arms around me, holding me like he’d thought he’d already lost me, then his hands framing my jaw, mine twisted in his shirt. For a moment we stayed just like that, his thumbs pressed beneath my cheekbones, our bodies shaking against each other. He smelled like fresh soap and coffee and the skin I’d mourned for twenty-four hours.

“Are you okay?” he said, and that broke me all over again. Not, Do you forgive me? Not, What did Kai tell you? Not even, Do you still love me?

I nodded because there was still a knot in my throat that words wouldn’t slip past.

“I didn’t think—” His eyes moved over my face, seeing too much and not enough.

“Kai told me the truth. How your mother’s been using the story for a year.” My fists were still wrapped in his shirt. “He wouldn’t tell me the rest. He said the rest was yours.”

The words struck him hard. He went still, and I watched him understand what I was asking for.

He let out a breath that shuddered a little on its way out. Then he looked at me.

“Is that my shirt?”

I nodded.

“Come upstairs,” I said. “The street’s already had enough of a show.”

He followed me to the porch, where Kai stood with his keys in his hand.

“I’m going to head out. Pretend I’m not emotionally invested in this,” he said.

They gently thumped each other on the back.

We walked upstairs in silence, then Damian shut and bolted the door behind us. We went to the kitchen. He sat exactly as Kai had, opposite me.

“Tell me about Wren,” I said. “Not the version that makes you look unforgivable. Just the truth.”

His fingers curled then flattened.

He looked at me like it hurt a little to meet my gaze. But he told me. Everything. That Wren had died a year ago, and his mother hadn’t even tried to force him to do it again until now because she knew he’d been too broken to be useful. But then the threats had come for him to fulfill his obligations again. And I had been the next.

He rolled up his sleeve to show me the rowan branch and nails. Then he told me the names of the women who had come before: Evelyn, Jessica, Layla, Violet, Isla, Zoe, Scarlett. The women he’d carried on his skin while he’d refused to let himself touch me.

“And then Wren,” he said, her name changing the timbre of his voice.

“She had a boy and a girl. Gus and Ava. I’d gotten good at waiting to feel it afterward. You learn where to put things when there’s no room left in you. But she kept finding the places I thought I’d boarded up. She made me laugh when no one else could. She knew when I was lying. She was older than me, and she’d seen too much to believe me. She cracked me open, and I told the truth.”

He hesitated, swallowed. “I fell in love with her.”

The words bruised me, and I felt guilty and selfish for even acknowledging it. And in the sting of it, I grieved right along with him.

“And you tried to help her?” I said, watching the memory etch tension into his jaw.

He nodded. “She didn’t have family except for her kids. She was alone. The father was a deadbeat who’d moved to Mexico. Her parents were dead. The coven didn’t have anyone they could threaten her with. I had everything ready. A car. An excuse for why I’d be out of town and an alibi, so they wouldn’t know it was me who got her out. I thought I had it all figured out.”

He stopped there and looked at me.

“Damian. Where were you driving that night?”

“To her,” he said. “I was driving to her.” His voice dropped. “I was ten minutes late.” His fingers curled again. “The door wasn’t locked. The tea kettle was still warm. She was on the kitchen floor. They’d dressed her in a white dress. Blindfolded her.” He paused, and everything went very still. “Flowers braided into her hair and a dead bird in her mouth. That’s how they sign things. You saw what they do, what they left on your doorstep.”

I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe loudly. I was afraid any sound from me would remind him he was saying it out loud.

“Her kids were crying down the hall. Behind a door. They hadn’t come out. I think they’d been told not to at some point, by one of them, and they were still terrified.” He paused.

“And you couldn’t go to them?”