Chapter 002
He was driving a car.
He frowned, his grip tightening as he turned the wheel to follow the gentle curve of the road. This didn’t make sense. He was the one driving—he could feel the leather beneath his palms, the vibration of the engine—but the hands on the wheel didn’t belong to him. They were slender, the nails long and painted a deep burgundy. He never wore rings, yet three gold bands glinted on these fingers.
He looked down. A jolt of wrongness hit him in the chest. Instead of his pajama pants, he was wearing a red skirt that rode high on his thighs.
What the fuck is happening?
He needed to stop. He needed to pull over, find a phone, and call Voren. Voren would know what to do. Voren always handled the crises while Kaelen handled the bodies.
Kaelen tried to move his foot to the brake, but the leg didn’t respond. He turned his head, spotting a smartphone on the passenger seat. He willed his arm to reach for it, to grab it, to dial. Nothing happened. His hand stayed on the wheel, locked in place by a will that wasn’t his own.
The car slowed at a red light.
Panic started to claw at his throat. He wasn’t just driving a stranger’s car; he was trapped inside a stranger’s body. A passenger behind the eyes.
He flipped down the visor mirror. The reflection that stared back wasn’t his tired, angular face. It was a woman—blonde, with wide blue eyes and a dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose. She leaned closer to the glass, rubbing a smudge of lipstick from her front tooth. Kaelen felt the friction of her finger against the enamel, intimate and terrifying.
The light turned green.
Kaelen felt the woman’s foot press down on the accelerator. The car inched forward into the intersection.
A screech of tires tore through the air to his left.
He tried to turn his head, tried to scream, tried to brace for impact. The woman’s body did none of those things. She just kept driving.
Something massive slammed into the driver’s side door.
The world shattered. Metal screamed against metal. Kaelen felt a blinding, crushing pain in his head and torso, a pressure so immense it felt like being squeezed through a sieve. Then, darkness.
“Kaelen!”
Kaelen shot up, a scream ripping from his throat.
He was still screaming when his eyes flew open, the sound raw and jagged in the quiet room. He snapped his mouth shut, gasping for air, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
Darkness. Quiet. The smell of old books and laundry detergent.
He was home. In his apartment. In his bed.
“Kaelen, hey. Hey.” Voren was there, his voice rough with sleep but laced with panic. A warm, heavy hand gripped Kaelen’s shoulder.
Kaelen flinched, then sagged. He wasn’t the only one awake. A familiar, dry clicking sound echoed from the floorboards. Marrow scuttled into view, the pale white of his bones catching the faint light from the streetlamp outside. The skeletal octopus didn’t hesitate; he climbed the duvet and settled into Kaelen’s lap, his bone-tentacles curling possessively around Kaelen’s waist.
Kaelen buried his hands in the pile of bones. The tactile reality of them—smooth, cool, hard—anchored him. He wasn’t in a crushed car. He was here.
“Are you okay?” Voren asked. He was sitting up now, leaning close.
“Just a nightmare,” Kaelen managed. His voice was trembling.
“Are you sure? Because that sounded bad. You were screaming.”
“It was... realistic. One of the most realistic ones I’ve ever had.” Kaelen rubbed his face, trying to scrub away the sensation of the impact. The pain had felt real. The woman’s fear had felt real. If that had been actual reality, he wouldn’t be sitting here. That woman was dead. He knew the feeling of death intimately enough to know she hadn’t walked away from that crash.
“You want to talk about it?” Voren asked softly.
Kaelen shook his head. He didn’t want to relive the feeling of being trapped in someone else’s skin. But the adrenaline was still pumping through his veins, sharpening his thoughts, turning his fear into something more volatile.
“I think it’s the stress,” Kaelen said, though he didn’t believe it.
“Then you should relax.”
Kaelen whipped his head around, glaring at Voren’s silhouette. “Relax? How am I supposed to do that when a big, bad Organization is hunting you? When Silas is bleeding out on our couch because of people looking for you?”
Voren sighed, the sound heavy and tired. “Kaelen, now isn’t the time. It’s three in the morning. You should get more sleep.”
“Do you want me to have more nightmares? Because I can guarantee you I will if I close my eyes right now.”
“So what, you’re not going to sleep ever again?”
“I’m sure I’d sleep better if I knew what the fuck was going on.” Kaelen pushed Marrow slightly to the side so he could shift his legs. “Why won’t you tell me? Silas gave me the highlights—the bogeyman reputation, the torture—but I don’t understand how you fit into it. It doesn’t make sense.”
“You just had a nightmare,” Voren deflected.
“So? I’m awake now. Tell me.”
Voren didn’t answer immediately. The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. Kaelen’s mind, already primed for worst-case scenarios by the dream, started to spiral. Voren wasn’t just being private; he was hiding something. Something specific.
Kaelen knew Voren had a past. You didn’t get the scars Voren had by working a desk job. But they had an understanding—or at least, Kaelen thought they did. Voren protected him, and Kaelen didn’t ask too many questions about where the bruises came from. But this? This was different. People were coming to their home. Silas had been carved up.
“What are you hiding?” Kaelen asked into the dark. “What did you do that’s so terrible you can’t tell me?”
Because that was it, wasn’t it? The Organization killed people. Voren had sworn he wasn’t a hitman, that he didn’t kill innocent people.
What if he lied?
Voren stared at the outline of his boyfriend in the dark. He could feel the tension radiating off Kaelen, a physical heat that bridged the gap between them on the mattress.
He didn’t want to have this conversation. Not now. Not ever, really, but definitely not in the middle of the night after Kaelen had woken up screaming from God knows what. But Voren knew that tone in Kaelen’s voice. The fear had curdled into suspicion.
Voren had known this clock was ticking. He’d been borrowing time, stretching the days out, hoping that if he loved Kaelen enough, if he kept him safe enough, the past would stay buried. It was a stupid hope. In his line of work, the past didn’t stay buried. It usually clawed its way out of the grave.
“We should go back to sleep,” Voren tried, though he knew it was futile. “We can talk in the morning when we’re both thinking clearly.”
Kaelen just stared at him. Even in the shadows, Voren could feel the weight of that gaze. It was the same look Kaelen gave him when he was trying to figure out if a spirit was lying.
“What are you hiding from me?” Kaelen asked again. His voice was soft, barely a whisper, but it hit Voren harder than a fist.
There was pain in that question. Betrayal. Voren closed his eyes for a second, steeling himself.
“Something I’m not proud of,” Voren admitted.
“Something you think I wouldn’t approve of?”
“I know you wouldn’t. Even I don’t approve of it, and I did it.”
“Just tell me, Voren.”
Kaelen sounded exhausted. Wary. Voren hated that he was the cause of it. He wanted to reach out, to smooth the hair back from Kaelen’s forehead, but he kept his hands to himself. He didn’t think he had the right to touch him right now.
“I know the Organization Silas was talking about,” Voren said, keeping his voice steady. “I worked for them. Years ago, at the beginning of my career. I don’t know how much Silas told you, but they aren’t good people. They have a legit side that contracts with the government for security and intelligence, and a not-so-legit side that acts as mercenaries for whoever cuts the biggest check. Assassinations. Extractions. Sabotage.”
“And you worked for them?”
“For the mercenary side. Yes.” Voren swallowed the dryness in his throat. “Like I said, it’s not something I’m proud of. At the time... I felt like I didn’t have a choice. I was young, I was good at it, and once you’re in, it’s hard to get out.”
“You always have a choice,” Kaelen said.
The judgment was quiet, but it was there. It stung because it was true. Voren had made his choices. He’d prioritized survival and money over morality, and now he was lying in bed with a man who spent his life trying to bring peace to the dead, wondering if that man could ever look at him the same way again.
“Maybe I did,” Voren conceded. “But what’s done is done. I can’t change the past.”
“And what is the past exactly?” Kaelen shifted, sitting up straighter. “What did you do for them? Who did you kill? You told me you never killed innocent people, but Silas said they wipe out entire families. And I know about the plane crash in Pennsylvania. That was them, wasn’t it?”
Voren winced. He should have known Kaelen would make the connection. That crash had been all over the news a few years back—mechanical failure, they said. But in the circles Voren ran in, everyone knew it was a hit on a single passenger that took a hundred civilians down with him.
“There’s no proof it was them,” Voren said weakly.
“Are you really telling me you don’t think it was?” Kaelen’s voice rose. “Because where there are rumors like that, there’s usually truth. People wouldn’t say it was the Organization if they didn’t have a reason. Innocent people died, Voren. Families.”
“I wasn’t involved in that,” Voren said quickly. “I swear.”
“But you worked for the people who were.”
The distance between them felt like a chasm now. Voren couldn’t stand it. He needed to fix this, to bridge the gap before it became permanent. He reached out, his hand finding Kaelen’s arm in the dark.
“Kaelen, please.” He tried to pull Kaelen closer, needing the contact, needing to remind him that this was them. That Voren was the man who made him coffee and fixed the sink, not just a killer.
Kaelen stiffened and shoved him away. Hard.
“No,” Kaelen snapped. “I don’t want you to distract me. I want you to be honest. I want you to tell me everything you did and every lie you told me.”
“I promise I’ll tell you what you want to know, but—”
“Then do it.”
Voren opened his mouth to speak, but the sound never came out.
He heard it first—a rapid, dry skittering on the hardwood, like oversized dice being shaken in a cup. Before his brain could process the noise, something hard and heavy slammed into his ribs.
Voren yelped, the air leaving his lungs in a rush. He fell back against the pillows, instinctively throwing his hands up to protect his face.
The bedside lamp clicked on.
Kaelen was sitting up, eyes wide. In his lap, Marrow was vibrating. The skeleton construct had turned away from Kaelen and was facing Voren, his tentacles raised in an aggressive, undulating fan. The bones rattled against each other with a menacing clack-clack-clack.
“Are you okay?” Kaelen asked, breathless. “What happened?”
“I’m not sure.” Voren rubbed his side. That was going to bruise. “I think... I think Marrow hit me.”
Voren reached out toward Kaelen again, reflexively seeking reassurance.
Thwack.
A bone tentacle whipped out faster than a striking snake, slapping Voren’s hand away. It hurt. It was like being hit with a police baton.
Voren snatched his hand back, staring at the creature. “Marrow, what the hell?”
“Marrow, stop!” Kaelen wrapped both arms around the construct’s central column of vertebrae, trying to restrain him.
The skeleton fought him. Marrow was surging forward, tentacles thrashing, trying to get at Voren. It wasn’t playful. This was violence.
“What’s gotten into you?” Kaelen grunted, struggling to hold the construct back.
Voren scooted toward the edge of the bed, putting distance between himself and the creature. He’d always found Marrow unsettled—it was a pile of animated bones, after all—but they’d had a truce. Marrow tolerated him. Liked him, even. This? This was pure aggression.
It looked like Marrow wanted to beat the shit out of him.
“I have no idea what’s going on,” Kaelen admitted, his face flushed with exertion. He loosened his grip slightly to adjust his hold, and Marrow immediately lunged.
Kaelen had to haul him back, pinning the construct against his chest. Marrow clicked furiously, his eyeless skull fixated on Voren.
Voren watched the display with a sinking feeling in his gut. Kaelen had created Marrow. He poured his magic into the thing. If Marrow was reacting like this, it wasn’t random.
The skeleton looked ready to slit Voren’s throat the moment he closed his eyes.
“Great,” Voren muttered, rubbing his throbbing hand. “I’m going to have to sleep with one eye open in my own damn house.”
Kaelen was freaking out.
He was the necromancer. He was the expert. He had stitched Marrow together from disparate animal bones and imbued him with a spark of will. He was supposed to know his creation inside and out. But looking at the vibrating pile of calcium in his arms, Kaelen didn’t have a clue what was wrong.
Marrow had never been violent. Mischievous? Yes. Clingy? Absolutely. But violent? He didn’t even have claws. He was a support animal made of ribs and vertebrae. And he liked Voren. Kaelen had seen them on the couch a dozen times, Marrow draped over Voren’s legs while Voren pretended to be annoyed.
So why was Marrow trying to take Voren’s head off?
The construct was humming with tension, straining against Kaelen’s forearm like a leash-straining dog. Kaelen tightened his grip. He wanted nothing more than to lean into Voren, to ask for a hug after the nightmare, but he was terrified that if he got too close, Marrow would snap.
“Shhh. Easy. Easy, buddy.” Kaelen stroked the smooth dome of Marrow’s skull—a cat skull, technically—and made soothing noises.
It took a long time. Slowly, the frantic vibration in the bones began to ebb. The clicking slowed. Marrow’s tentacles lowered, though they didn’t uncurl. He remained rigid, watchful.
Kaelen let out a breath he’d been holding. “I’m sorry,” he told Voren, who was still rubbing his hand. “I don’t know what happened.”
Voren looked at Marrow warily. “I think he was protecting you.”
“What? Protecting me from what? You?” Kaelen frowned. “That’s ridiculous. You’re... you.”
“I’m the guy who just made you upset,” Voren pointed out quietly. “He’s probably just reacting to your stress. You had a nightmare, you’re scared, and we’re arguing. He feels what you feel, doesn’t he?”
Kaelen looked down at the skull in his lap. Was that it? Was Marrow just a mirror for his own internal panic?
Right now, Kaelen was a mess. Between the vivid terror of the car crash and the cold dread of Voren’s confession, his emotions were a slurry of fear and betrayal. If Marrow was picking up on that, no wonder he was lashing out.
But it felt specific. It felt personal.
Kaelen carefully lifted Marrow and placed him in the center of the bed, between them. A barrier. Marrow immediately curled into a tight ball, his tentacles forming a cage around his central mass, but he kept his front facing Voren.
“We should get back to sleep,” Voren said, though he stayed near the edge of the mattress. “I know you want answers, Kaelen. And I’ll give them to you. But not right now. We’re both too on edge.”
“I know.”
“Yeah?”
Voren looked relieved. That relief made Kaelen feel sick.
Voren was hiding behind the exhaustion, using the late hour as a shield. And Kaelen was letting him, because the truth was, he was too tired to fight. He was terrified of what he might hear.
He needed to know if Voren had killed innocent people. He needed to know if the hands that held him at night were the same hands that had rigged that plane in Pennsylvania. But if the answer was yes... what then?
Kaelen reached over and clicked off the lamp.
The darkness rushed back in, absolute and heavy.
“Come here,” Voren murmured.
Kaelen hesitated. Part of him wanted to stay on his side of the bed, behind the wall of bone that was Marrow. He wanted to punish Voren for the lies. But the fear from the nightmare was still a cold knot in his stomach, and the apartment felt too big, too full of shadows.
He scooted closer, though he didn’t bridge the gap completely. Voren reached out and rested a hand on Kaelen’s hip. The touch was familiar. Grounding.
Kaelen closed his eyes, listening to the rhythm of Voren’s breathing. He tried to let it lull him back to sleep, but his mind refused to shut down.
The woman in the red skirt. The painted nails. The crash.
Voren’s mercenary past. The lies.
Marrow’s sudden, violent protective streak.
The pieces were spinning in the dark, and Kaelen had a terrible feeling that when they finally clicked into place, the picture they formed was going to be ugly.