Chapter 20
Itake a cab.
Because I’m still healing, can’t run anyway, and don’t trust my legs to carry me the entire way without collapsing under the weight of what-ifs.
The driver barely glances at me when I slam the door behind me and choke out the address, his eyes already back on the river of traffic ahead.
The city moves around us in indifferent currents: pedestrians drifting between crosswalks, cyclists weaving through impossible gaps, storefronts opening their mouths to the morning.
I sit in the back seat and try not to break apart. My hands won’t stop shaking. My ribs ache with every breath, a deep structural soreness that reminds me how close I came to dying. I press my palms flat against my thighs and close my eyes.
Listen.
My magic responds immediately, rising from wherever it sleeps inside me, unfurling like something alive.
It reaches outward, threading itself through concrete and steel and bodies and distance.
It searches with purpose, with urgency. It calls.
It pulls. It begs. Please, it says. Listen to me. Please.
I ignore the pounding of my heart, the way my lungs keep catching on the edge of panic. I let the sensation guide me, let it stretch beyond the limits of my physical body. Somewhere in this city, there is a shape my magic recognizes as its counterpart, the place it settles, the place it belongs.
For one long, horrible second, there is nothing.
And then—
There.
Faint, but unmistakable.
Familiar. Mine.
My eyes fly open.
Relief hits so hard it makes me nauseous.
It floods through my bloodstream, dissolving the tight knot of dread that’s been choking me since I woke up.
My magic surges toward the feeling, wrapping itself around that distant presence like hands grasping for hands.
The pull strengthens, warm and certain, and I feel it like the hum of a tuning fork, a gentle, vibrating caress that surrounds every atom, muscle, limb of my body, in my heart and in my bones.
He’s there. He’s alive.
I laugh, the sound breaking free, a noise halfway between a sob and something hysterical. Tears blur my vision, spilling freely down my face as the cab lurches to a stop.
“Here,” the driver says.
I shove cash into his hand without counting it and stumble out onto the curb, my boots hitting pavement already warm with the late morning sun.
My magic pulls hard toward the side entrance.
I run.
My lungs burn, my sides protest, but I don’t slow.
The familiar brick of the soup kitchen rises in front of me, the alley pavement torn like a wasted battlefield, littered with leaves and candy wrappers and the faint chalk scars of old containment circles.
The metal door sits closed, quiet, ordinary.
For half a second, terror whispers that I imagined it.
Then the door slams open.
He steps out.
Instinct takes over before reason can catch up. My hands fly forward, energy snapping outward in a sharp concussive wave that hits him square in the chest and knocks him back a step.
“Nightmare,” he huffs, more startled than hurt. “What the fuck?”
I stare at him.
Jonah stands there in a faded gray sweatshirt and dark jeans, hair rumpled, shoulders slumped with exhaustion. His face is pale beneath his skin, faint bruising still visible along his jaw and throat. A bandage peeks out at his collarbone. He looks wrecked. He looks alive.
“You’re alive,” I sob.
His expression crumples instantly, relief and disbelief crashing across his features. His eyes shine, impossibly blue, already wet. “And that’s a bad thing?” he asks softly.
“You could’ve texted me,” I choke out, my voice cracking into something unrecognizable. “You could’ve—called—or—something—”
“Mayari,” he says, taking a cautious step toward me. “Baby. Angel. Nightmare.” His mouth curves weakly. “I’ve only known you for two weeks, and you were unconscious for more than half of it. I don’t even have your phone num—”
He loses the rest of the sentence when I launch myself at him.
He catches me automatically, arms wrapping around my back with crushing strength.
The impact knocks the breath out of both of us, but neither of us lets go.
I bury my face in his neck, breathing him in—soap and skin and something darker and ancient underneath, something uniquely him.
My magic surges wildly, racing along every point of contact, cataloging him in frantic detail. My hands move without permission, gripping his shoulders, his arms, his face, mapping the angles and planes, confirming he’s solid and real and here.
He exhales against my hair, a broken sound, and presses his face into the crown of my head. His fingers slide into my hair, tightening, holding me in place as if he’s afraid I’ll disappear.
“I thought you were dead,” I whisper.
“I thought you were dead,” he answers, his voice rough. “Again. Saving me.”
I pull back just enough to see him and immediately kiss him—his cheek, his jaw, the corner of his mouth, every inch of skin I can reach. He laughs breathlessly, tears slipping down his temples, before his hands frame my face and he kisses me properly, deeply, memorizing me all over again.
It feels like coming home to a place I didn’t know I was building.
I’ve lived sixty-seven years without belonging to anyone, without letting anyone belong to me.
Two weeks ago, he was a demon I tried to kill in an alley.
Now my magic recognizes him before I do.
Now the absence of him feels like suffocation, as though my soul has rearranged itself around his presence and forgotten how to breathe without it.
Like my magic has spent the last two weeks weaving him into the fabric of me, thread by thread, until I can no longer sense where I end and he begins.
He pulls away slowly, pressing his forehead to mine, his thumbs brushing the damp tracks beneath my eyes. “Thank you,” he murmurs. “For saving my ass. For saving my family.”
“I didn’t do anything,” I say, shaking my head. “We both almost died.”
“But you saved us in the process,” he says simply.
I swallow hard. “I kept our family safe,” I correct.
His breath catches. The word settles between us, fragile and enormous. Family. His smile spreads slowly, reverently.
“What happened?” I ask, still holding onto his sweatshirt. “After I—after everything?”
“I woke up in the ER,” he says. “Horribly confused and profoundly stitched together. I was so incredibly lucky to be there.” He pauses, weighing his next words. “Tasha Greene was there.”
I blink. “What?”
“She operated on me. She knew what I was.” His eyes find mine. “She knew who I was, and who I was to you.”
My stomach drops. “She—”
“She saved my life anyway.”
Emotion surges up so violently it buckles my knees.
“I talked to her afterward,” he adds. “For a long time. About you, mostly.”
“Oh God.”
“It was uncomfortable.” His mouth twitches, but the smile doesn’t last. “She asked me why I never fought back.”
I still.
“When you tried to kill me,” he clarifies.
“Twice.”
“Thank you for keeping count.” He exhales slowly. “I told her I didn’t know.”
“You never used your magic against me.”
“I know.”
“You could have.”
“Easily,” he says, which earns him a glare. “Sorry. But yes. I could have.”
“And you never…” I trail off.
“Fed from you,” he finishes gently. “No.”
“Why?”
Jonah looks at me for a long moment. “I spent the last two weeks trying to answer that question like there had to be something supernatural behind it. Some quirk of demon magic I’d never learned about.
My parents died before they could teach me much of anything.
Maria knew even less about what I was than I did, and demons don’t exactly sit around comparing notes. ”
His gaze drops to where my hands are still twisted in his sweatshirt.
“But there wasn’t an answer.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean there wasn’t anything stopping me from hurting you.” His eyes lift to mine. “I just didn’t want to.”
Something in my chest cracks wide open.
“Even when I was trying to kill you?”
“Especially then, apparently.” A faint smile touches his mouth. “Conveniently.”
“Jonah.”
“I know.” His expression softens. “I think some part of me understood what you were to me long before the rest of me caught up. Not destiny, not magic. Just…” He shakes his head, almost laughing at himself.
“You. I wanted you safe before I wanted to admit I cared whether you stayed. I trusted you before there was any logical reason to. And feeding from you…” His face tightens slightly.
“I couldn’t anyway, but even if I could, I would never be able to take anything from you that you hadn't chosen to give me.”
My eyes burn.
“I kept thinking there had to be some complicated explanation,” he says. “Turns out I was just falling in love with the woman trying to murder me.”
I huff out something between a laugh and a sob. “Twice.”
“Mayari.”
“Sorry.”
“You’re not.”
“Not remotely.”
He smiles, and I cup his face between my hands. “So there was nothing wrong with you.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far.”
I laugh through the tears.
Then his expression changes, all the humor draining away. He covers one of my hands with his. “Tasha got your letter.”
My breath catches.
“She hasn’t forgiven you,” he says. “But she listened. She said that she’s tired.
Tired of running. Tired of losing loved ones to senseless slaughter.
Tired of having debilitating anxiety trying to protect her daughter every time she leaves the house.
” His eyes soften. “She said if there’s a chance to stop it, she’ll stand beside you. ”
Tribunal.
“Speaking of which, what are you doing tomorrow?” I joke weakly.
He raises his eyebrows. “Before or after hoarding you in my bed?”
“After, definitely after,” I smile. “I need your help. And Tasha’s.”
He doesn’t hesitate. “I’m in,” he says simply.
My magic settles into a deep, steady warmth at the certainty in his voice.
He reaches up and wipes the last of my tears away with his thumb, studying me with an expression that still feels like a miracle.
“You look terrible,” he murmurs.
I let out a weak laugh. “You look worse.”
He grins faintly, and for a moment the world narrows to just this—the alley, the warmth of his hands, the impossible fact of his heartbeat, blood rushing through veins under my palms.
He’s alive. And for the first time in my life, I know exactly what my magic has been trying to tell me all along.
“You’re mine and I love you,” I inform him. “I’m hoarding you forever—like a dragon.”
Jonah wraps me in his arms, hoarding me, possessing me. “You’re mine. And I’ll love you forever,” he says. “Like a demon.”