Chapter 24 #2
Lena glanced up at me. “You’re hovering.”
“I am aware of that.”
“Hover less.”
“I cannot.”
Lena sighed. “If you’re not going to stop hovering, then talk. Help me understand what’s happening.”
She wanted answers I could not give her.
“I have nothing to offer you.”
She wanted the truth, but telling her would only burden her. She was human. This problem was older than her bloodline, older than her country. Older than the foundations beneath our feet.
I stepped closer to the bed, staring down at Nadia’s pale face. Her lashes were dark against her pale cheeks, her breathing shallow but steady.
My emotions waged a war inside me, each one vying to take up a bigger part of me. Rage, helplessness, guilt, fear, something close to grief.
Nadia murmured something unintelligible in her sleep, and my heart fractured.
Lena placed a steady hand over Nadia’s wrist. “She’ll be okay. She just needs rest.”
But I knew better.
Rest would not save her.
Only I could.
Nadia’s lashes fluttered. A small sound left her throat—weak, confused, unbearably human.
Then her eyes opened.
She blinked up at me, dazed. “What… what happened?”
I forced my jaw to unclench, and when I spoke, my voice came out lower than intended. “You passed out.”
She pushed herself halfway upright before I could stop her. “I did? That’s weird.” She pressed her hand to her forehead. “I’ve been feeling strange lately. Kind of like when I caught the flu from one of my students last winter. Maybe I’m coming down with something.”
I looked away, the words scraping in my throat. “Perhaps.”
She frowned. “I should call my doctor. Get checked out. Make sure I’m not dying of something stupid, like adult-onset plague. Will you come with me?”
“Yes.” My answer was immediate. Too sharp. Too revealing. “Of course.”
If I stayed beside her another second, I would shatter something—my composure, the wall between truth and what she could survive, perhaps the room itself.
So I stood up, turned around, and walked away.
Her voice followed me, thin with confusion. “Cristian? What’s wrong?”
I did not trust myself to speak. I kept moving.
“Cristian.” Her voice was stronger this time. Commanding. “Stop. Tell me.”
I stopped, but I did not turn to look at her. The truth clawed at my tongue, desperate to be freed. I want to tell her the bond was doing this to her, that every second she stayed tied to me, she slipped closer toward something irreversible.
But telling her would carve a new terror into her chest. She was already fraying; I would not cut the last thread myself.
So instead, I said something far worse. “You were safer before I woke.”
The silence that rang through the room was the same silence that descended at the end of a battle when the steel of swords stopped ringing. Her breath caught, as if I had wounded her, and it cleaved through me with surgical precision.
I left the room, so I wouldn’t be compelled to look at her face.
In the hallway, I sank down against the wall, drawing my knees up, elbows braced against them, hands covering my eyes as if I could press the world back into order by force alone.
I had endured wars, executions, betrayals that spanned centuries. I had been hunted, bound, drowned in darkness.
None of it compared to her collapsing in my arms.
None of it compared to knowing why.
How had I come to this? I had slept through empires rising and falling, untouched by time—only to wake into a world where one woman’s soft laugh, one stubborn crease between her brows, one whispered “I don’t feel well” could unmake me completely.
And now she believed I regretted her waking me, that I regretted my place in her life.
The lie tasted like ash in my mouth.
I pressed my forehead to my knees. My chest felt carved out, hollow.
I had wanted freedom. Instead, I found her. And now she was slipping through my fingers.
Because of me.
Because of this bond.
Because I had no idea how to save her. Every second that I failed, she drifted closer to something I could not bear to name.
I clenched my fists until my nails bit skin.
She wanted answers. She wanted honesty.
But if I loved her—and God help me, I did—then the cruelest truth was the only one I could not give her: I was killing her, and I had no idea how to stop it.
I felt her presence before I saw her.
“Nadia,” I murmured without lifting my head.
She knelt in front of me, IV still attached, and leaned closer. “Contact?”
I nodded.
She didn’t hesitate. She wheeled her IV closer and settled into my lap like she’d done it a hundred times.
Her warmth slid through me, quieting the frantic burn beneath my ribs.
My entire body stilled, like someone had placed a hand on the beast clawing the inside of my skull and told it to lie down.
Her palms came to my face, gentle but unwavering.
“Look at me.”
I didn’t want to, but I obeyed. Her eyes held mine with unnerving clarity—no fear, no flinching, only that fierce, stubborn tenderness she wielded like a blade.
“You didn’t make my life worse,” she said. “Quite the opposite.”
My throat tightened.
“I’ve been doing my own healing this summer,” she went on, voice soft and sure.
“You aren’t healing me. I’m doing that. But you keep proving over and over that I am enough.
You reinforce the idea that I’m worthy. You co-regulate with me without even trying.
And I’ll be grateful for that for the rest of my life, no matter how this ends up between us. ”
Her thumb stroked my cheek.
“I’m so glad I woke you.”
Co-regulating. Another of her new words. To me, it felt like keeping pace with another heartbeat until both learned the same rhythm.
Something in me broke loose. A traitorous tear escaped, leaving a hot trail on my cheek.
She caught it with her lips.
For a long moment, I could not breathe. I wrapped my arms around her and held her against me. I needed this more than air. The noise in my mind—the fear, the guilt, the war—dimmed to something bearable.
She rested her forehead to mine, breath warm. “Cristian,” she whispered, “what do you want to come out of all this?”
The question hollowed me out.
“Freedom,” I said. “Gold. Justice.”
She pulled back enough to search my face. “In that order?”
“Today, yes.”
Her hand slipped to my jaw, grounding. “Where do I fit?”
The bond moved inside me. I met her gaze, choosing my words with precision. Truth mattered.
“Next to me,” I said. “Or I fail.”
She nodded once, slow and certain, and tucked herself closer against me. I wrapped my arms around her again, holding her as if she were the sole point of gravity in a world designed to pull me apart.
She stayed. And I did not let go.
Not yet.
Not until I had to.
I needed silence. Not the soft, domestic kind Nadia filled the house with—her hums, her clinking of cups, her heartbeat faint and constant through the walls—but the kind that stripped a man down to nothing but purpose.
The basement was the only place left in this wretched century with any semblance of quiet and aloneness.
I shrugged off my shirt and let the still air wrap around me. The space smelled of dust, metal, and old earth. Nadia had told me it was a “storage area.” She was right. Now it stored my frustration.
I began with the punching bag—leather, suspended from a chain, a luxury I’d found in the corner weeks ago. I struck it once. Hard. The chain screamed.
Again.
Again.
The rhythm came easily. My body remembered this language—violence without malice, movement for the sake of survival. It steadied me when nothing else could.
But today, even that discipline frayed. My mind would not empty.
Every thought was of Nadia.
Her laugh. The curl of her hair when it slipped free of its pins. The warmth of her skin when she brushed past me and pretended it meant nothing. The way her energy always reached for mine even when she was trying to keep her distance.
I punched harder.
The chain snapped once, then caught again. I felt the vibration up my arm like a warning. The air around me shuddered with the force of the blow.
She was deteriorating.
No—fading.
But I couldn’t tell her. I didn’t want her to panic. I couldn’t afford the luxury of breaking down, or letting the fear that lived in my bones push through until it became the only thing I could feel.
Not before I found a solution that I could present to her alongside the truth.
I’d thought I had more time.
More time to find the answer to breaking the bond. More time to hunt down the right creature with the right knowledge. More time to unravel what had been done—what I had done.
The longer I stayed awake in this century, the louder the feral part of me screamed. The part that tore through armies, that refused to kneel even when poisoned, that slaughtered men twice my size with nothing but will and rage.
The part that loved too fiercely to let anyone near what belonged to me.
I wanted to protect her.
I needed to sever this bond—for her. For both of us.
Because if it remained, it would consume her.
The tether would keep dragging her down with me, into the darkness the court had forged.
It would make her prey to every creature who wanted leverage against me.
Every enemy I’d ever made. Every old god, every witch, every vampire holding a grudge against my name.
She would be the weapon used to hurt me. She would be the weak point in my armor. She would be the target. And it would destroy her.
But the thought of waking without her pulse echoing in my chest, the thought of rising each night and not feeling the soft tug of her life, the idea of stepping into a world where she did not exist…
It felt like stepping into the sun without protection.
Unthinkable.
Necessary.
I struck the wall this time. Concrete cracked. Dust rained down like ash.
I didn’t know where to begin.
Ambrosia offered nothing but spite. Hammond would rather watch me burn. My brother was somewhere out there—alive, hidden, suffering in ways I had yet to understand. Every creature who might know something was either dead, loyal to the court, or waiting for a price I couldn’t pay.
But I would find a way.
If I had to tear apart every vampire in Boston—
If I had to drain every ancient creature, interrogate every witch, shake the foundations of every court in this godforsaken century—
If I had to kill them all to find the answers we needed—
I would. For her, I would.