Chapter 25 | Anna
I awoke alone in an unfamiliar bed for the third time in a week. But this time, I knew where I was. A cabin. Somewhere north. Somewhere I couldn’t hurt anyone but him. I was determined not to do that, but I didn’t know how.
Though I was still tired—even after sleeping most of the day and all night—there was a sense of safety that had settled through me.
But safety was fragile, and I promised myself I would not take it for granted.
I still didn’t know where we were. Turkey? Russia? Somewhere else with endless forests? For all I knew we were in the Enchanted Forest. Wouldn’t be the worst news.
I didn’t need to know. Better if only he knew.
I slid out of the bed and stood a moment to get my bearings. Morning light filtered in through the one window, seeping through the edges of the blackout curtains. The room was sparsely furnished. One chair in the corner. A bedside table. Lamp. Dresser.
I still wore the borrowed clothes from the first safe house and, frankly, I was in desperate need of a shower and a toothbrush.
And coffee.
I smelled coffee.
I followed my nose to the small kitchen.
He was cooking scrambled eggs.
I blinked, staring at him like he was a stranger.
“You cook?” I asked.
“Only when necessary.” He scooped them off onto a plate.
I’d never seen him cook or do anything domestic in all the time I’d known him. It was… weird. Had I awoken into some alternate dimension?
In Walker Manor someone else did the cooking. Grace mostly, after she arrived. When I was still hunting relics, Kincade had shown up, parked himself in the spare bedroom, and never left. We’d never been alone together. Not like this.
Even traveling together, we stayed in hotels, had room service, slept in separate areas.
I was still trying to work it all out when he put a mug in my hand.
“Here.”
Perfectly taupe coffee and it smelled like heaven.
“You know how to summon me now,” I said.
He smirked then handed me a plate.
I plopped down at the small four-person dining table and ate like I’d been starving.
I couldn’t remember my last meal. I tried to think back to when that was, but the days blended into each other and were foggy.
My mind couldn’t figure out where one memory stopped, and another started.
And by the time I’d finished and pushed away the plate, I realized he stood on the opposite end of the room watching me in his careful, calm way.
Ten feet. Was that too much? Not enough? I didn’t know.
I didn’t like how far away he was and not only the physical distance. This whole… thing… that happened to me was wedged between us so tight, it’d take nothing short of a miracle to remove it.
And that’s what they wanted. Fucking Sebastian Crane wanted to turn me against him because he hated the thought that Kincade picked me over them.
Vormund was merely the executioner.
I thought back to the car ride. Even that had been… a lot. And not because I didn’t want it. Because who knew what was going to make me turn into a weapon? He was there, filling up the space, and I was trying to avoid everything about him.
And then the nightmare when I dozed off. The hospital. Testing me with the guard. And the pressure built in my head until it snapped me awake. The only thing that made it go away was digging my nails into his palm while he drove.
I looked at his hands then. He held his own mug but wasn’t drinking.
“I can’t live like this,” I blurted.
He said nothing for a long minute. “Like what?”
I waved at the distance between us. “Like this.”
When he said nothing, I forged on.
“I need to understand what triggers it. We need to understand.”
His brows drew together. “And then what?”
“And then we can exist in the same room without you hovering twenty feet away like I’m going to explode.”
He didn’t respond, his jaw flexing in that way it did when he was working through something he didn’t like.
“What if you do?” he said. “Explode. What if testing it hurts you?”
“What if it doesn’t? What if half of this is fear and we don’t know what the rules are?” I leaned forward, frustration bleeding into my voice. “We can’t live like this, Kincade. I can’t live like this. Not knowing is worse than knowing.”
He set down the mug, folded his arms across his chest, and regarded me with something that might have been interest.
I’d been thinking about the what but not the how, so I decided to wing it. “So, you test me.”
“No.”
“Yes,” I said with a nod.
I knew what I was asking. That one or both of us could get hurt. But I had to know. I had to know if I could fight this. I couldn’t let it control me.
“But I’m the one who hurts you.”
His expression said it all. He despised this idea.
“I won’t hold it against you,” I said, trying for levity. He was not amused. “You’re the trigger. It’s the only way we can test it.”
“Fuck, Anna. I hate this idea.”
“I know.” I didn’t look away from him. I wanted to, but I didn’t. “I can’t do this without you, though.”
A long silence as he stared me down, trying to decide if I was a lunatic. It was likely the worst idea in the history of ever, but I had to know.
He was quiet for a long moment. His mouth formed a thin line. “Fine. But we do this smart. Small steps.”
“Agreed.” Relief flooded through me, even as my stomach knotted with anxiety.
“What triggered it before?” he asked.
I tried to think back through the fog. “In the first safe house... you moved too quick at the window. I didn’t even see you, just felt the movement.” The memory made my skin crawl. “And then later, when you...” I gestured vaguely. “When you touched my wrist. That set it off, too.”
“Fast movement. Touch.” He said it like he was cataloging threats. “What didn’t trigger it?”
“The car.” I frowned, trying to remember. “You were right there. Close. But nothing happened until I fell asleep and had the nightmare.”
“So, proximity alone isn’t enough.”
“Not by itself.” I met his eyes. “But we don’t know, do we? We’re guessing based on two incidents.”
He nodded. “So, we test variables. Movement first. Slow. At distance.”
“Okay.” My heart was already racing. “Like... what? You walk across the room?”
“If that’s what you want to start with.”
God, this was insane. We were treating me like a bomb that needed defusing. But he was right. We had to start somewhere.
“Normal movement?” I said. “Like you’re getting coffee or something?”
“Normal movement. Across the room.” He glanced at the open space between the kitchen and the small living area. Fifteen feet. “And if anything starts—any pressure, any feeling—you tell me. We stop.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“Anna.” He waited until I looked at him. “I mean it. The second something feels wrong, you say stop.”
“I will.”
We stared at each other for a long minute, neither of us moving, like a Mexican standoff. My palms broke into a hot sweat. I waited. He waited.
I got to my feet. He walked across the room, past me and into the small living room.
Nothing happened. Not even a glimmer of pain.
“Well,” I said after a minute. “That was anticlimactic.”
“Be serious,” he snapped.
“I am. Try again.”
He huffed. “Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what? I’m just standing here.”
“Like expecting me to do something.”
“You are doing something.”
His expression went flat. “Walking.”
“Yes,” I said with a nod. “Do it again.”
“Stop looking at me.” He sounded growly.
“Fine.” I turned away.
I never heard him coming. All of a sudden, he was there and then there was this weird cold place flooding my head. I spun, hand up defensively—
Don’t. Don’t attack him. Don’t—
Pain exploded behind my eyes. Sharp, vicious pressure as my will slammed against the programming. My hand snapped up toward his face, but he caught it, squeezed it.
The cold receded instantly. The pain vanished with it.
I jerked back anyway, crashing into the dining table, knocking over the coffee mug. I dropped my hand to my side, breath sawing in and out. That one instant touch had grounded me. Stopped the cold. Stopped the pain.
But my heart was still racing. “That… was it.”
“You felt something?”
I nodded. “Cold. In my head.” The words scraped out. “I never heard you. I felt you. And when I tried not to attack—” I gestured vaguely at my head. “Pain. Like something was tearing.”
“That’s the difference then. You perceived a threat.”
“Yes. And when you grabbed my hand… it stopped. I was still there. Enough.”
He took a step back. “I think that’s enough for today.”
“For today,” I agreed.
It was nice to have clean clothes that didn’t smell like sweat even if they weren’t mine. Silas wasn’t a great personal shopper, but at least I wouldn’t have to go barefoot or commando. So, there was that. Henleys, boots, cargo pants in black and charcoal. Not exciting.
After our morning testing, we steered clear of each other the rest of the day. Well, as clear as we could given the small space. He spent time hiding in another room or checking the perimeter. Mostly, I suspected, to stay busy.
There was absolutely nothing to do, and I was bored senseless. I still had headaches off and on and decided drinking an entire pot of coffee would chase them away. It did not. I was merely high on caffeine. Which made my captivity all the more irritating.
A couple of times, there was the awkward kitchen encounter where he gave me questionable looks about how many cups I’d had, and I merely shrugged and went on my way.
I did spy a bottle of whiskey in one of the overhead cabinets and I wondered if that was an accident or by design. Given that Silas didn’t know our penchant for drinking whiskey together, it seemed accidental. I missed doing that.
After the sun went down, I kicked off my boots and sat on one end of the sofa while he maintained his distance in the one chair on the other side of the room.
“You can sit with me, you know,” I said breaking into the long silence.
Honestly, if I couldn’t touch him, I wanted him in my line of sight. He was fun to look at.
He looked up at me, indecision in his eyes, and for half a heartbeat, I thought he’d refuse. Then he rose and stepped over to the sofa and sat on the opposite end. A cushion between us.
Well, it was a start for both of us.
My eyes were heavy despite the hours of sleep. I guess my body was still trying to recover from everything that had happened.
Out of the blue, he asked, “Where’s your necklace?”
My necklace. I’d forgotten all about it. They’d taken it before they cut into my head. I never got it back. I didn’t even know where it was. The nurse could have pocketed it. She could have handed it to Vormund. Either way, it was gone.
“They took it,” I said simply. And saying it out loud was like a knife to the gut.
He’d bought that necklace in Jerusalem before our harrowing escape. A guardian angel standing behind a girl kneeling in prayer. He’d said it was a belated birthday present. It was worthless to anyone but me, but I’d worn it every day since.
He went still and said nothing. He didn’t offer to get it back or to buy me a new one. I appreciated that more than anything. He never gave me false hope. Even when my uncle died, he let me cry my eyes out while handing me a box of tissue and a glass of whiskey.
We’d been through a lot of horrible things together. This was one more horrible thing we’d survive.
I nestled into the corner of the sofa. Without thinking, I stretched out my legs. The ball of my foot brushed his thigh. I started to pull it away when his hand landed on my ankle. Casual. Relaxed. Like it was nothing.
My heart skipped. Which was ridiculous. It was my ankle. He’d touched me plenty of other times before without my heart wanting to beat out of my chest.
Actually, that wasn’t true. There was that one time in Spain where we were at the gala, and I wore a dress that cost the same as my last car, and he was in a tux.
And he steered me onto the dance floor like it was the most natural thing in the world.
My foggy mind latched onto that memory like a lifeline.
“That time in Spain,” I said. “At the gala.”
He tipped his head and looked down the length of the sofa toward me. “What about it?”
I wanted to say it was the night that changed everything. That he looked damn good in that tux. That I liked being in his arms, even if I couldn’t dance. That I wanted to be that girl again. That I would give anything to be back there again, except this time let him kiss me.
But I didn’t. Instead, I shielded myself with humor.
“I never told you, but you dance pretty good for an old guy.”
A brief scowl flashed across his face and then it was gone, replaced by something else. Something softer. “That gown…” He started, then stopped. His throat worked, remembering. “Green looked good on you.”
“That’s not what you said.”
“What?” he asked, looking confused.
Or pretending to. But I remembered this clearly. It was burned into memory. Because that was the night I admitted to myself that he mattered to me, that it was no longer a crush, that I was falling for him.
“You said I looked magnificent.” Then I gave a faint laugh. “And then you told me to stop fidgeting.”
“I don’t remember that.” He looked positively thrown.
And I liked that I rattled him. “You will someday.”
It was also the last thing I recalled before drifting to sleep.