Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The darkness isn’t as suffocating this time.
It’s not dragging me down like mud. It’s more like water, something I can swim through.
So I do. I kick forward, and cut through the black with my arms, weightless and soundless.
My breath moves easily, even though there’s no air.
No pressure. Cold that hums against my skin—not cruel, not sharp.
Somewhere distant, there’s wind. A low, endless howl that doesn’t quite touch me, but still makes my chest tighten.
There’s no light here, but I’m not afraid.
It’s just that nothing wants to be seen.
Until something does. A flicker. A figure.
I stop swimming and float until I can make out the shape in the darkness.
It’s Ryot. He’s sitting on a jagged stone outcropping that juts from nothing, his back to me. He’s shirtless, scars a pale map across his shoulder blades, and his head is bowed like he’s listening for something. Or praying.
“Ryot?” My voice skips, a stone across the water. The sound of it sends out soft ripples in this water-like darkness.
Ryot lifts his gaze, and his midnight-blue eyes are lit from within—blue embers smoldering at the end of a fire. Or the beginning of it. “What are you doing here?” he asks me.
I walk—swim?—forward, my limbs moving without resistance, like the darkness is holding me up instead of dragging me down.
“Dreaming,” I tell him. “But this is much nicer than my normal dreams.”
He kind of smirks, and that, at least, is the same even here. “Agreed,” he says.
His gaze lingers on me as I leave the blanket of darkness behind and then his eyes heat, like those embers caught fire. I look down to find I’m naked.
I laugh. “Well, at least this is a dream. Otherwise, this might be awkward.”
His smile finally breaks through—real, crooked, and far too pleased. “If it helps, I’m not complaining.”
I sit next to him on the rocks. There’s something familiar about this place, but I don’t know what it is. It’s hazy, covered in mist. I can’t make it out. But I’m not worried about it. I’m more interested in him.
“Tell me something about yourself. Something no one knows,” I demand.
His smile fades—not in a bad way, just in that quiet, serious Ryot way that says he’s thinking. “You don’t ask easy things, do you?”
“I thought we established that easy isn’t really our thing.”
That earns a soft huff of a laugh, but he doesn’t look at me. He leans forward, forearms braced on his knees, fingers laced loosely together. The embers in his eyes have dimmed—not gone cold, simply banked.
“Something no one knows…” he repeats, then goes silent long enough that I almost take it back. Finally, he says, “I’m afraid of deep water.”
“Seriously?”
He nods, mouth twitching like he knows exactly how strange that sounds coming from someone who’s wrestled death demons and climbed gods-cursed mountains.
“You can’t see the bottom,” he explains. “You never know what’s down there. Could be nothing. Could be everything.”
I kick my feet against the rocks, and the darkness circles like water. “But you still swim?”
“Of course, but I hate every second of it.”
I bump his shoulders with mine. “I thought you were fearless,” I tease.
He cuts me a sidelong glance, the corner of his mouth lifting. “I’m afraid of plenty of things, but I don’t let the fear control me.”
“That's the difference between cowards and warriors?”
He meets my gaze fully now. “No. That’s the difference between survivors and ghosts.”
And just like that, the mist feels a little heavier, a little closer. Still, I’m not cold. I could never be cold when he’s looking at me like that.
I lean forward, close enough that my lips hover over his. He doesn’t pull away, doesn’t move at all. He watches me, like he’s waiting to see if I’ll really do it. His eyes are a dare.
So, of course, I do. I press my lips against his, firmly.
I’m surprised by the realness of it, the way his mouth moves with mine.
It’s not a hungry kiss, not desperate. It’s quiet, careful, as if we’re both afraid to break this spell we’re under, afraid the dream itself might shatter if we press too hard.
His lips are warm—warmer than they have any right to be in this place of shadows and mist. One of his hands rises, hesitates, then finally finds my jaw, his thumb grazing the edge of my cheekbone. I pull back a little, enough to see his eyes. They’re burning now—no longer embers, but full flame.
“I’ve never had a dream this sweet,” I whisper.
“I’ve never had anything this sweet,” he murmurs back.
My breath catches, and I reach my own hand forward to touch him.
But then I’m falling. Backward. Upward. He reaches for me. I think.
“Leina!”
The darkness breaks apart. Or maybe it comes together.