Chapter 21
Savla
The walk back to Hanna’s apartment was quiet. Not the easy kind of quiet we sometimes shared—the soft, warm silence where her magic brushed against me and everything felt strangely right.
No. This silence felt fragile.
Hanna walked beside me, her hands tucked into her sleeves and her shoulders hunched like she was trying to hold herself together.
She didn’t cry again. She didn’t crumble.
She just… walked. And I matched her steps, letting the evening settle around us, letting the safety of the building smooth the sharp edges Corwin and her parents had carved into her.
At one point, she swayed—just slightly, not enough to fall. Enough to make something inside me reach for her—a reflex I stamped out quickly.
“Easy,” I said quietly.
“I’m fine,” she whispered.
She wasn’t. I knew she wasn’t. But she straightened, lifting her chin, determined to not look small or lost. Or like she’d been hurt by people who didn’t deserve to have that power over her.
When we reached her door, Ribbon hopped ahead and pressed himself against the door like a sentry. Hanna huffed a shaky laugh. “Thanks, boy.”
I should’ve said goodnight then. I should’ve turned around. I should’ve gone before temptation made me stupid.
Instead, I cleared my throat. “If you need anything, you can… find me.”
Her eyes lifted to mine—wide, honest, unbearably soft in the lamplight.
“I know,” she said.
Two simple words, but they landed like truth and the truth was dangerous. So I nodded once, stepped back, and forced myself to turn away before the bond tugged me any closer.
I listened to her as she went inside. I listened as Ribbon plopped himself in front of the door on the inside of her apartment, like the guard toad he was. And I heard the soft sound of her bedroom door opening.
Only then did I breathe again.
The stairs creaked under me as I climbed up to the rooftop. The night was cold, but it felt good. Necessary.
My workshop greeted me with a half-lit forge and the faint sharp scent of cedar shavings. A breeze slipped through the open shutters, stirring the smaller unfinished carvings and sketch papers.
I went straight to the back table—the one I always pretended she didn’t know existed. The one where I stored the pieces I didn’t let anyone see.
The carving sat there, exactly where I’d left it. Two figures, back-to-back.
Her silhouette, light, loose and a little defiant, hair curling tightly the way it always did after she brewed something chaotic. My silhouette beside her—taller, broader, turned slightly toward her without meaning to.
It was a ridiculous thing to make. An impossible thing to keep. But every night I worked on it anyway.
I lifted it carefully, my thumb brushing along the line of her carved shoulder. She fit against me perfectly—even in wood.
A deep ache pulled through my chest, slow and familiar. I shouldn’t have let myself get attached. I shouldn’t have stepped between her and Corwin. And I definitely shouldn’t have moved when he reached for her.
I knew what this meant. My father had taught me exactly what happened to a man who let the bond guide his choices.
His whole world narrowed to one person. And when she died—he followed. I wasn’t sure if it worked the other way, too. If the bond forced the same from the female half of the whole, but I wasn’t going to take the chance with Hanna. I would not drag her into a fate she couldn’t escape.
She didn’t need a mate—didn’t need me—to be whole. She’d already proven that.
And the truth gnawed at me with every heartbeat. She’d be safer without me. She’d be happier, eventually, with someone who wasn’t doomed to ruin what he touched. Things always went wrong around me and I knew that no matter what I did, things would always continue to go wrong.
Corwin’s words echoed in my skull—not because they were true, but because I feared the truth beneath them. If I stayed, she’d choose me and if she chose me, fate would finish the job.
I set the carving down and stepped back, running a hand through my hair. The workshop felt colder now or maybe I’d done that. Or the fear did.
I extinguished the forge flames one by one, watching the light flicker and fade. Then I stared at the carving. At the future I shouldn’t want. At the female I couldn’t have and I whispered to the empty workshop the same lie I’d been telling myself since the moment the bond sparked awake.
“She’s better off without me.”
But the bond thrummed in my chest—low, steady, unyielding—as if it disagreed. As if it already knew the truth I refused to let myself imagine.
It wasn’t going to let me go anywhere. Not really. Not if it meant being away from her. Not anymore. I could have made the choice when I’d first met her. But now that I knew her? Now that I’d seen so much of her? There was no way.
The dream pulled me under before I could fight it. One moment I was staring at the ceiling of my workshop, the embers low and cold. The next, I was back in the Hellplane trenches.
The air was thick with smoke and blood and the metallic hum of magick burned too hot. I saw my father ahead of me, tall, solid, a mountain of a male who used to lift all three of us younglings with one arm and laugh.
But he wasn’t laughing now. He turned toward me, his eyes hollowed-out caves of grief. His skin had gone gray, like the life had already drained from him.
“Father—” I shouted, but my voice came out wrong. Thin and childlike.
He didn’t hear me, or if he did, he didn’t respond. He only whispered one word.
“Mate.”
Then he walked into the battle line without armor. Without a shield. Without a soul.
“Stop!” I screamed, sprinting after him, legs heavy as stone, lungs burning. My voice didn’t carry and my hands couldn’t reach him.
He disappeared into the magick fire the warlocks had conjured to fight us. And the world shook itself apart.
I fell to my knees, rubble crashing down around me, smoke choking me. His voice—no longer his—echoed everywhere.
“This is what it does to us. This is what it will do to you. This is what you will become.”
I tried to shout back, to swear I wouldn’t, but something seized my chest. A pulse. A tether. A bond.
Not my father’s—Hanna’s.
It dragged me forward, a burning line from her heart to mine—a pull I couldn’t sever and a promise I hadn’t made but still bound me.
“You will lose her, and then you will follow. As I did.”
“No,” I gasped. “No!”
But the fire swallowed everything.
I jolted upright from where I’d fallen asleep on the workbench, drenched in cold sweat. My breath came in sharp, broken pulls and my heart throbbed beneath my skin. The bond pulsed—distant but alive, like a heartbeat thrumming somewhere in the dark.
Hanna.
I pressed my palms to my eyes, trying to steady myself, but the dream clung to me like ash, tightening around my lungs. For a long time, I didn’t move. I just sat there in the half-light of dawn, listening to my breath, telling myself the lie I’d perfected.
“I won’t let it happen. I won’t become him. She won’t be bound to a curse.”
The bond pulsed again but I ignored it. After long moments, I stood, needing something to do—anything—to ground myself. I headed toward the worktable at the back, where I kept the carving.
If I could just look at it—just remind myself why I couldn’t let this bond win—maybe the panic would settle. But when I reached the shelf—it was empty.
“I put it right here,” I muttered, checking behind the jars of resin.
A soft slorp answered from somewhere behind me. When I turned, Ribbon sat in the middle of the room…with something unmistakably wooden in his mouth.
Oh no.
“Ribbon,” I said slowly, “what is that?”
He chirruped proudly.
Oh, no, no, no, no—
I lunged toward him, and he panicked—or decided it was a game—and hopped away with the carving clenched between his jaws.
“Ribbon, drop it,” I barked.
He hopped even faster.
“No—No—Stop—Ribbon—!”
He attempted to leap over a bucket, missed, whacked his head on the workbench, and the carving went flying—spinning—glinting—and landed in the forge ashes. Buried in them.
I dove for it like the floor was falling out from under me, coughing as soot puffed upward. I prayed that there weren’t any lit embers left in the forge.
I yanked the carving free, my heart hammering. It was covered in ash, but intact. I exhaled shakily, clutching it to my chest.
Ribbon croaked apologetically and nudged my elbow. I tried to glare at him but I failed.
“You’re lucky you’re so damn cute,” I muttered.
He blinked at me, unrepentant. I looked down at the carving—Hanna and me, back-to-back—her carved silhouette dusted in gray, my own half-buried beneath. It hit me, sharp and brutal. I’d almost lost this—a piece of her. A piece of us that shouldn’t exist.
And instead of being relieved, I felt like I’d nearly lost something I couldn’t replace. That terrified me more than the nightmare. I brushed the ash from her carved cheek with trembling fingers.
“You’re safer without me,” I whispered to the empty room.
But the carving sat heavy in my hands. Warm and wanted. Like a truth I didn’t dare name.
Ribbon pressed against my leg in a slow, comforting rub—his version of a hug. And for the first time since waking, I let myself breathe.