Chapter 15
Elias
The back room of Ancient Magicks smelled like burnt sage, incense, and candle wax.
This shit would've made me sneeze back when I was human.
Now it just registered as background noise to the more important details, like the elevated heart rates of everyone in the room, the sharp tang of anxiety rolling off the witches, and the steady presence of Killian and the others flanking the walls, much as they had last time we were here.
And Talin. Always Talin, her scent cutting through everything else like a blade.
The protective circle the witches prepared dominated the center of the room, drawn in what looked like salt mixed with something darker. Esme's blood maybe? I didn't think the witch coven here was into her blood magic, but then again, maybe they thought it'd be better not to take any chances.
There were no greetings. No small talk. Not even a smartass remark from Jamal or Dae about where I'd spent the last eighteen hours or so.
Talin and I settled ourselves in the center, cross-legged and facing each other.
Her knees brushed mine. She reached out her hands, and I took them.
I wanted to tell her to stop. That we didn't need to do this.
I wanted to drag her out of here and run until we were so far away no one would ever find us.
But I couldn't do that. Kenya—my friend—would die if we didn't get her mate back. And my mate was his only chance.
"Don't let go," she whispered. "No matter what you see or feel."
"Never."
Around us, the witches began to chant. Judy led, her voice rich and commanding. Alice joined in, her tone higher but no less powerful. Esme, Angel, and Lizzy added their voices, weaving layers of protection into the circle.
Kenya sat just outside the salt line with Killian, Jamal, Brogan, and Dae-Jung, arms crossed, jaw tight.
Talin's fingers tightened around mine. Her palms were warm, slightly damp with nerves. I carefully squeezed back.
"Are you ready?" Her voice trembled slightly, a mixture of hope and apprehension threading through her words.
"Yes." Ready as I was ever gonna get. This time I was going to try to follow her into the threads.
She nodded, her pretty green eyes lit with a fierce determination.
The corner of her mouth twitched upward, not quite a smile.
"Okay. Close your eyes," she murmured, her voice dropping to a whisper that somehow resonated through me more powerfully than a shout.
Her fingers squeezed mine again. "Follow me. "
I obeyed, letting my eyelids fall shut. For a moment, there was nothing but the chanting in my ears and the feel of Talin's hands in mine, the steady thrum of the bond between us.
Then the threads were there.
They bloomed behind my eyelids in a wide array of colors.
The ones connecting the people in this room glowed brightest, thick cords of light pulsing with emotion and magic.
I noticed the bond between Killian and Lizzy blazed nearly gold, fierce and possessive.
Brogan and Esme shone a reddish-orange, newer but no less solid.
The others all had their own unique colors too.
And ours. Gods, ours.
The thread connecting me to Talin burned white-hot, so bright it should hurt to look at. But instead of pain, I felt only rightness. Like this was exactly where I was supposed to be, tethered to this woman, ready to follow her into the dark.
"Do you see it?" Her voice sounded distant, echoing as if from the bottom of a well.
"I see everything."
"Now watch."
She tugged on a thread. Alex's thread. It was the same electric blue I glimpsed in her earlier visions, but now I could see its full length and where it attached to Kenya. Most of it existed here, in this room, before it disappeared into a darkness that had no place in the physical world.
Talin followed it.
And following the call of blood, both hers and mine, I went with her.
One moment we were sitting in Ancient Magicks, surrounded by protective magic and the people we trusted. The next we were falling through a space between spaces, tumbling through dimensions that were never meant to hold living souls.
The threads were everywhere here, thousands of them, millions maybe, creating a web so complex it made my head spin. They pulsed and shifted, connections forming and breaking between heartbeats. This was what Talin saw. This was the weight she carried every time she reached for her power.
Elias?
Her voice cut through the chaos in my head, an anchor in the madness.
I squeezed her hands tighter. I could still feel them, solid and real, even as the world dissolved around us.
I'm here.
She pulled us deeper, following Alex's thread through the tangle. The blue strand grew thicker as we traveled, more substantial, until it was thrumming with pain and rage and desperate, clawing hope.
The realm shifted.
The threads closed in around us, thousands becoming millions, millions becoming infinite.
They pressed against my consciousness, whispering secrets I didn't want to know, showing me futures and pasts that never existed.
But I got the feeling they could, all you had to do was follow a different thread.
Talin, slow down.
She didn't respond. Her presence beside me dimmed slightly. The white-hot thread connecting us flickered.
TALIN.
Alex's blue strand pulled her forward like a current, and she followed it with single-minded determination. But the deeper we went, the stranger this place became. The threads no longer just connected people. They split and branched, showing possibilities, choices not yet made, lives not yet lived.
I saw myself turning away from Talin that first night at the club. Saw her walking away, disappearing into the New Orleans night, our thread never completely forming. In that reality, she tried to save Alex alone and burned herself out completely, her magic consuming her from the inside.
I saw another where I claimed her that first night, too rough, too desperate, and she ran from me. Our thread formed but broke, jagged edges that cut us both.
Talin, we need to go back.
Her hands in mine felt less solid. Like if I squeezed too hard, my fingers might pass right through her.
"Almost there." Her voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere, fractured across a dozen different versions of her words. "I can see him, Elias. I can see—"
She gasped.
The realm around us exploded into chaos.
Alex's thread didn't just lead forward anymore.
It split, branched, multiplied like a cancer through the fabric of reality itself.
Each strand showed a different outcome, a different possibility.
In one, he was free. In another, he was dead.
In a third, he was something…inhuman, transformed by Marcus's magic into a weapon that would destroy everyone we loved.
And Talin tried to see them all.
"No!" I pulled on her hands, trying to drag her back, but she wasn't listening. She pulled one hand free and reached for the threads, trying to determine which one was real, which path would save her cousin.
The moment her fingers brushed the first strand, she screamed.
Not with her voice. With her soul.
Information flooded through her and into me. Every possible version of Alex's fate, every choice that could be made, every consequence rippling out across time and space. It was too much. No mind, mortal or witch, was meant to process this kind of knowledge.
Talin, let go!
But she either couldn't hear me or she ignored me.
Her presence scattered like light through a prism. I could feel her fragmenting, pieces of her consciousness splitting off to follow different threads, different possibilities. She was trying to find the right path by experiencing all of them simultaneously.
She was killing herself.
"TALIN!"
I screamed her name into the void, but it dissolved before it reached her. She was too far gone, too deep in the web. The silver thread connecting us strained, growing thin and brittle.
If it broke, we were both lost.
Wait. There. I could see her, or rather, I could see a dozen versions of her, each one following a different possibility.
One found Alex but died saving him. Another failed and watched Marcus kill everyone she loved.
The third succeeded, but she lost herself in the process, becoming a creature of pure threadwalking power with no memory of who she was before.
In every version, she was slipping away from me.
The bond between us pulled taut. Pain lanced through my chest. Not physical. Deeper, like my soul was being torn in half. My fangs punched down in response to a threat I couldn't fight.
Come back to me!
Nothing.
Talin, please…
The fragments of her grew dimmer, spreading further apart. Soon they'd be so scattered I wouldn't be able to find them all. Wouldn't be able to put her back together.
No.
I refused to fucking accept that.
A century of control, of carefully maintained order, of never letting myself feel too much or want too hard, it all burned away in an instant. Everyone thought I needed to dominate my environment because I was afraid of what would happen if I didn't. They were wrong. I wasn't afraid of chaos.
But I was afraid of this. Of caring so much about someone that losing them would shatter me beyond repair.
I couldn't lose her.
I grabbed our thread with my free hand. The white-hot strand seared my palm, the magic something that would probably kill a weaker vampire, and my mouth opened, baring my fangs in a gruesome smile. I didn't give a shit about the pain. If this destroyed me, at least I'd die trying.
The thread pulsed in my grip, alive and writhing like a snake caught in a web. Through it, I could feel every version of Talin scattered across the possibilities. Felt her pain, her determination, her absolute refusal to give up on Alex even if it cost her everything.
Stubborn woman. Beautiful, brave, infuriating woman.
I love her.
The thought crashed through me with the force of a freight train. I loved her. Not just wanted her. Not just needed her blood or craved her body or felt bound to her by fate.
I loved the way she refused to give up. Loved her sharp tongue and sharper mind. Loved the vulnerability she showed me last night, the trust it took to bare her scar to me. Loved her fierce loyalty to family, her determination to save Alex even when everyone told her she was crazy.
I loved her, and I would drag her back from the edge of oblivion if I had to tear this entire fucking realm apart to do it.
TALIN!
I poured everything into that call. Every emotion I'd suppressed for a hundred years. Every desperate need for control and order, reframed into a singular purpose…
Bringing her home.
The thread in my hand blazed so bright I couldn't look at it directly. Power flooded through the bond, vampire strength and will and pure, stubborn refusal to let her go.
Come.
Back.
To me.