TWENTY-TWO
The world is still in pieces, but Bishop leans against the doorframe and forces a half smile that doesn’t quite reach his haunted eyes. “You didn’t scream. Taliesin will be disappointed.”
I stare, my skin tightening like I’m wearing it wrong.
Dead. He can’t be standing here. He died in my arms.
My thoughts skid, trying to find the trick—the proof that I’m hallucinating. But the fire is still crackling in the hearth, my muddy boots and his bloodstained tunic in front of it.
This isn’t real. He isn’t real.
“Say something,” the ghost murmurs, as if I’m some wild beast that must be approached with caution. “You’re starting to worry me.”
A laugh chokes out of me. Thin, broken, wrong. It scrapes from my throat like something dragged up from the bottom of a well run dry.
He steps into the room, his eyes narrowing with concern, and drops the jar and book onto the bed. They land with a soft thump, the quilt rippling from the impact of their weight. Like they’re real. But he can’t …
No.
I’m asleep. I turn and plant my hand on the windowpane to steady myself, but the cool glass sends a shiver racing through my body that doesn’t wake me up. Not a dream. He can’t be …
None of this makes sense.
“You’re dead.” I need to say it. Even if it feels undeniable and dubious at the same time.
For a heartbeat, the words hang between us.
Then the-thing-that-can’t-be-Bishop-but-is-doing-a-fucking-unnerving-impression-of-him lifts his head and meets my eyes. “I was.”
A pit opens in my stomach. No, it collapses, the sensation so abrupt it steals my breath, and everything else falls out of focus but those two words.
I was.
But I can still see his death. His body convulsing. The blade slippery and warm in the palm of my hand. Blood so dark it’s nearly black soaking into the mud beneath my knees. The copper tang of it mixing with smoke, and my stomach churning. He’s heavy in my arms.
I can still feel the ache in my muscles.
And now, he’s standing in front of me.
I lost so much today. It’s no surprise that my mind is going, too.
I look away, unable to bear it, and my gaze settles on the bed, on the spot where the book has left a dent in the otherwise crisp sheets.
If that’s real … I drag my gaze to him again.
The hair pulled back at the nape of his neck is still damp, as if he washed it in a hurry.
His face and hands have been scrubbed raw, but soot still shadows the creases of his knuckles, and there’s a dark, ruddy smear under one ear.
The patterns on his skin have softened back to silvery white scars.
His white shirt is clean, the collar open in a way his uniform never allows.
But his canvas pants are stiff with dried blood, the bottoms of them eaten away by ragged scorch marks.
I take a slow step from the window, then another before I can lose my nerve. I continue even as something inside me braces as if I’m walking toward a ledge and not a man.
Bishop tenses as I lift a trembling hand out—and stop less than an inch from his chest.
If I touch him, he’ll vanish.
That’s how it works. Ghosts evaporate at contact. Hallucinations don’t survive reality. I can’t bear the possibility that this is some cruel trick of my mind. Not after everything else.
His face remains blank as he watches me, but it is his face. His eyes are the same winter blue beneath his dark lashes, his nose still slightly crooked, his mouth set in that impatient line it forms when he’s holding something back.
“If you’re a ghost …” I murmur, my fingers hovering so close I swear I feel the heat of his body. I can’t bring myself to move them that last fraction of an inch.
Bishop sighs, the gruff sound sending a jolt to my core, and grabs my hand to close the distance himself.
His fingers are warm and callused. I gasp and pull back out of instinct, but he doesn’t let go. He presses my palm flat against his chest. The body underneath doesn’t yield. His thumb brushes the back of my hand once. Slow. Deliberate.
Daring me to feel it. Feel him.
His warmth sinks into my skin, and beneath my hand: a heartbeat.
Strong. Steady. Alive.
My own heart stutters, then accelerates wildly, pounding against my rib cage. This can’t be happening. It isn’t fair.
I yank my hand away, but only so I can dig my fingers into his arm and pinch him.
“Fuck.” Bishop grunts like he’s biting back a yelp, but he doesn’t stop me.
I push his sleeve up, looking for the burns from the fire, for the blisters that had already started to form when he died.
There’s nothing there now.
No burns. No scars. Just normal, healthy skin, apart from more of those strange patterns that he hides.
Something fragile flares in my chest. A stupid, treacherous spark I don’t deserve. A thousand questions crowd my tongue, all of them desperate and ridiculous and terrifying. But I don’t ask them. Instead, my voice cracks around a single name. “Kieren?”
Bishop stiffens. Regret flickers across his face and is gone in an instant, dousing that spark. The finality of that look settles heavily in my bones.
Kieren is dead.
I shouldn’t have even asked.
I sure as fuck shouldn’t have hoped.
Bishop shifts his weight as if he might step closer, might reach for me. The space between us contracts, charged with the promise of comfort.
But his hands remain at his sides. “He wasn’t like me.”
Wasn’t.
It’s strange how a single word can sound so final.
I stagger back a step, needing to put space between us, but my knees buckle. Pain spears up my legs, ripping through tissue and muscle as if the fire isn’t finished with me yet. The room lurches sideways.
He catches me before I hit the ground.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs, lips too close to my ear. Grounding me. Saving me again. I want to hate him for it.
“I’m fine,” I say through gritted teeth.
He doesn’t bother arguing. He simply lifts me into his arms with infuriating ease, just like he did in the clearing.
But I’m not going to escape this. Whatever this is.
Bishop lowers me onto the edge of the bed and reaches for the glass jar of salve. “Your burns need attention.”
I make a weak sound of protest that dies in my throat as he kneels in front of me.
He twists off the lid. The bitter, medicinal scent is so pungent that I can taste it, but his fingers hover above my skin. Waiting.
“Vessica said you didn’t want a stranger’s hands on you,” he says quietly.
Something about the way he says it makes my chest ache. There’s understanding there. And beneath it, something fierce. Anger, maybe. Or fear. Or the kind of violence that’s better kept leashed.
“Not after …” I whisper.
I don’t finish.
But he nods. “Tell me if you want me to stop.”
My muscles tense in a way that has nothing to do with the coolness of the balm as he kneels at my feet and smooths the salve over my skin. The pain dulls to something manageable, and in its place, there’s only his touch.
His focus slips for half a second. Just long enough for something unguarded to surface before he reins it back in. His hands are steady. Controlled. Never lingering longer than necessary. But something reverent burns on his face, in his eyes, in that gentle, patient touch.
He’s holding back.
I brush a hand over his forehead, and our eyes lock, something raw and electric passing between us.
His breath changes. Mine does, too. He rests his head against my palm, his eyes shuttering, and for one reckless second, I want to close the space between us.
Until the grief coiling in my chest strikes.
Guilt follows close behind. Relief. Anger. Want.
All of it tangles together until it’s impossible to separate.
I choke back a sob, but he hears it.
A muscle tenses in his jaw, and he shifts back again. I lower my hand, but neither of us looks away, the space between us humming with everything we’re not saying.
Until I break the silence and admit, “I didn’t think you’d come after me.”
“You ran,” he says, not bothering to look up.
“Why?” We both know what I’m really asking.
He opens his mouth, forming a word that never leaves his lips before he drops his gaze to my wounds, returning to the task at hand with lethal concentration. As if focus is the only thing keeping him from answering.
Part of me doesn’t want it to be. The part of me that wants to feel proof that I’m alive.
But I’ll never forgive myself for it.
I reach for the book, so I don’t reach for him, and clutch it to my chest like it’s an anchor.
Like if I let go, I’ll shatter and never quite fit back together again. Or worse, make another reckless decision that I can’t take back. Because whatever this is—whatever he is—there’s already no going back.
Bishop finishes bandaging me, but he doesn’t stand up. “I expected more questions.” He nods to the book in my hands. “About that.”
The prompt cuts through the fog in my head, and I glance down at the title embossed on the cover.
Scions.
I almost drop it.
“It’s …” I clear my throat, suddenly hoarse. “It’s the book you stole from the shop.”
His expression darkens, lips pressing into a thin line as his eyes flick from the book to my face.
“I knew someone else was there,” he says at last.
I let out a brittle laugh. “Why did you take it?”
“I didn’t steal it.”
I lift an eyebrow.
“I have an arrangement with the owner,” he explains. “She lets me take what I want, and I don’t arrest her for possessing contraband.”
I stare at him. “That’s not an arrangement,” I say flatly. “That’s extortion.”
One corner of his mouth twitches. “Semantics.”
Something smooths the jagged fracture in my chest. Not relief. Nothing that generous. But the familiar rhythm of this, of pushing back and still finding him here. It feels almost … normal.
But it curdles in my stomach, sour. Wrong. I want to spit it out.
Not when Kieren is dead in the mud and I’m here. Alive, warm, and being tended to by a man who keeps saving me even when I don’t deserve it.
I lower my eyes to the book again, suddenly unable to meet Bishop’s gaze, and swallow. “What does the word mean?”