Jade #2
Evie’s hands come up behind him, and the air around her shimmers as she creates a heat shield around her and Kieran, as if protecting Kieran Cross is an instinct carved so deep in her bloodstream that it bypasses thought.
That’s when my brain catches up to my body.
Because Kieran Cross doesn’t draw his blade unless he means to use it. Evie doesn’t create a shield unless she believes she’s in danger.
They believe it.
All of them.
And Callie… she’s just watching us, her arms crossed, her expression smugger than any I’ve seen on her face before.
Silver cracks across my knuckles and races up my arms, faster and wilder than I’ve ever felt it move.
I’m shaking so hard my teeth are rattling, and the electricity isn’t just on my skin anymore—it’s inside me, flooding my chest and my throat until I taste metal and ozone on every breath.
The sky above the strait goes dark, clouds rolling in from nowhere, swallowing the light between the Pillars until everything is cast in shadow.
Thunder rumbles through the deck, vibrating up through the soles of my boots and into my bones.
Control it. You’re going to hurt someone.
But I can’t control it. Everything inside me is static, and I can’t control anything anymore, and I’m not sure I want to.
Thunder rumbles again, and another bolt of lightning splits the sky, hitting the water off the left side. Steam hisses upward in a white column, close enough that the heat reaches my face and the spray mists my arms.
Logan doesn’t move.
He’s not defending himself. He’s just standing in the path of my storm like he’s ready for it. Like he wants it. Like he looked at all the possible outcomes of this moment and decided that his preferred future was one where I struck him down with lightning.
“Do it.” He faces me and spreads his arms slightly. “I deserve it.”
And that makes everything worse.
Because he’s not fighting back. He’s not explaining or defending or saying it’s not what you think, and that makes me angrier than anything else.
He doesn’t get to stand there looking like a man walking to his own execution and make me feel guilty about it. He’s the one who lied. He’s the one who hid what he was for months while I fell so hard I couldn’t see straight.
He doesn’t get to be the tragic one right now.
I open my mouth to scream at him, to tell him that, to say something, anything. But before the words come, Logan takes a step toward me.
He’s moving slowly, his hands open at his sides, the way you’d approach a person standing on the edge of a cliff.
Electricity crackles down my arms, but it’s flickering and weak, as if even my magic doesn’t know what to do with this.
He’s close enough now that I could touch him if I reached out. Close enough that I can see the shadows under his eyes and the tension in his jaw.
My feet are rooted to the deck. My hands hang useless at my sides. All I can do is watch him close the distance between us, one agonizing step at a time, while my heart breaks and rebuilds and breaks again with every inch.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “For all of it.”
Before I can tell him that sorry isn’t nearly strong enough of a word to cover everything he’s done, black flames erupt around us.
The world goes muted.
The shouting, Kieran’s blade, Evie’s heat shield, Callie’s smug smile, the creak of the ship… all of it blurs behind a black wall of fire that burns without heat and devours without consuming.
It’s the between place. Logan pulled me here during the hellhound attack so we could plan and strategize and save everyone together.
That was back when I thought I knew him, when I thought we were a team.
I want to hit him. I want to run to him.
I want to cry and have him tell me that it’s lies, that he’s not what the Geryon’s saying he is.
But I can’t do any of those things, because my hands are shaking too badly to make fists, my feet are glued to the deck, and I have a sinking feeling that every horrible thing I just heard is true.
Then, finally, he speaks.
“Do you want to forget?”
His question lands like a slap.
“What?” I stare at him as the black flames flicker around us, casting moving shadows across the hard lines of his face.
His eyes are locked on mine, like my answer is all that’s standing between him and oblivion.
“Give me the word, and I’ll turn back time. You’ll forget everything you just learned.”
For one insane second, my heart lunges for the offer like a drowning person reaching for a rope.
Yes. Undo it. Let me go back to ten minutes ago when you were just Logan, the man who saved my life and trained me in secret and told me I was the only person who makes him feel alive.
“How?” I gesture at the wall of black flame separating us from the rest of the world. “The Geryon isn’t going to skip over you because you went back thirty seconds, or even a few minutes. It’ll just reveal you again and again, until you break from it.”
“I know.”
“So how would going back change anything?”
“I’ll find a way.” His gaze burns into mine, as if he’s trying to sear the words into my soul. “Yes, I have my limits, but for you, I’ll find a way.”
And he would. It’s written across every line of his face. He would shatter time itself, fracture his mind, and break every rule of magic that exists.
All so I could keep loving him, blind to the truth of what he truly is.