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“We promised each other honesty, didn’t we?” he reminded me. “Tell me.”

I swallowed down the ball of emotion rising in my throat. “It’s sad.”

“Tell me.”

“Wolfe—”

“Avery.” He finally tipped his head to mine, eyes glowing in the light. “I see you. There is no need to hide.”

I fiddled with the tassel and worked up my courage. “I was alone,” I whispered. “I started inventing worlds where I wasn’t. Where someone like me—” My voice broke. His finger skirted down my cheek gently. “Where someone like me had people in her life. Friends that would be willing to do anything and everything for you. Where I could be loved desperately and completely. Where there was never a second thought as to what I meant to the people around me.”

He nodded like he already knew. “You’ve been failed by so many people, grá. I am sorry for it. But,” he added, and for a moment he looked almost shy, “I promise while you are here, there will be no doubts or questions.”

“About what?”

He grinned at me. “About anything. Ask me how I feel. What I think. How I ache. I will tell you anything you want to know.”

I dug deep and gathered my courage. The words left me in a shaky exhale. “Did you want to kiss me?”

He laughed, the sound strained. “You’ll need to be more specific. On the boat? In the ruins? The faerie stones? The kitchen? Here, by the fire?” He waved his hand around. “It doesn’t matter the location, Avery. The answer is always yes.”

I blinked up at him in wonder. “So why didn’t you?”

“How would it be right?” he asked. My heart broke at the fear and hesitation in the words. “I am hardly a man. I’m a…a fraction of a soul. I have no business even touching you.” He rubbed a curl between his forefinger and thumb. “I would only taint you. Leave a stain against you.”

I sat up, head spinning. “How can you think that?”

“Because I am barely any different from the other things that exist out there.” He moved off the couch to pace before the fire. “We are all hungry, touch-starved creatures trapped in this world.”

“You’re not like them.”

How could he think that? He was kind, gentle, generous, supportive, and funny. How could he believe he was anything like those things that hunted in the darkness? Wolfe brought light with him. Warmth. Peace.

He shook his head, brown hair falling into his eyes. “Not yet, no. But I will be. They were souls once. Lost. Wandering. Unable to pass on.”

Real fear clawed up my throat. “What happened to them?”

“They festered. Became warped by their desperation and loneliness and they turned into something else.”

“What exactly are they?” I rose from the couch but Wolfe moved away, pacing in and out of the shadows before the window.

“Ghouls. Wraiths. Demons. They hunt in the shadows waiting for some poor soul to open a door they don’t understand or to wander somewhere they shouldn’t be.”

I shivered, wrapping my arms around myself. “Were they—did they come close? To me?”

His stare was bleak when it met mine. “Yes. The first night we spoke through the pages the shadows were closing in. Again at the ruins.”

“That’s why you told me to break it,” I whispered. I’d wondered where his fear had come from, what he was staring at off into the dark. “The cliffs?”

“Watching,” he confirmed. “I think they were hoping maybe they’d be able to sneak in. The closer we get to Samhain the stronger they will be.”

“Halloween?” My brow furrowed.

“Aye, though here it’s celebrated a little differently. Samhain is a celebration of the end of the harvest into winter. We honor our ancestors during it. It is the night the veil is the thinnest. Souls can cross more easily during that time.”

Hope dug its claws into me so sharply I winced. “And for you?” I managed. “What does that mean?”

He studied his hands, still so soft in the light. “I can cross.”