Jade
“Miles betrayed you.” My words come out fierce and protective. “He was your emberlinked partner, and he was ready to let them dissect you and control you.”
“You needed to protect yourself.” I think of all the times Logan saved me, helped me hide my secret, taught me control. “You did what you had to do.”
The rain pours harder, but when I shiver, it’s not from fear. It’s from rage at a system that would cage people like us. From relief that Logan trusted me with a deep, horrible secret. And underneath it all, a fierce need to protect him the way he protects me.
“I love you.” My words come out calm and certain.
“And before you tell me I don’t know what I’m saying, or that I’ll change my mind—I won’t.
Because I’ve had people walk away from me my whole life when things got inconvenient.
I know what abandonment feels like, and I’ll never do that to you.
Plus, we’re both walking targets if the Council finds out about us.
And while there’s a lot about this magical world I don’t understand yet, I know without a doubt that we’ll protect each other in it, always. ”
His expression breaks—that perfect control cracking to show hope underneath. “You watched me kill our professor and listened to me admit to killing my emberlinked partner,” he says, as if he can’t believe it. “And you love me despite it all.”
“Yes.” I stand strong, refusing to let him doubt me.
“Because I know you’ve been alone with this.
That you’ve been protecting everyone else while no one protects you.
I know you let me try to save Oliver over and over again, even though it was exhausting you to use your power that much.
And I know you’d do it again if I asked, so I wouldn’t have to live with the guilt of not having done everything I could. ”
His hand comes up to cup my face, his thumb brushing away rain and tears. “I’d do anything for you,” he says. “Never forget that. Promise me you’ll never forget that.”
“I promise,” I tell him, conviction ringing through each word.
Something between us snaps, and then Logan’s crushing his mouth to mine, kissing me like the only thing that exists is this moment and this connection between us.
When he pulls away, he looks at me—really looks at me, as if he’s viewing me in a completely new light.
“You’re all I have left in this world,” he finally says. “I watched my parents die four years ago, and since then, no one’s been able to see me—to truly see me.”
My chest goes tight. Not the sympathetic oh-that’s-terrible tight. The real kind, where your lungs forget how to work and time freezes around you.
“We’d just gotten home from dinner.” His voice remains controlled, but his grip on me tightens. “My mother was laughing about something. I remember thinking how happy she sounded.”
The rain drives harder, and I wait, barely breathing.
“I headed straight to my room.” His eyes are far off now, as if he’s seeing it play out again. “Forty-three seconds later, I heard the crash. Eight seconds later, I was downstairs, watching the assassin examine my parents’ dead bodies.”
I can’t find any words that could be enough as the horrifying image burns into my mind—Logan finding his parents murdered in their home. Their safe space. Where they should have been protected.
“I couldn’t move,” he continues. “Couldn’t think. I just stood there staring at the assassin for five entire seconds, being completely fucking useless.” His laugh is sharp. “And that was when I traveled back for the first time.”
I do the mental math in my head as quickly as possible, which admittedly isn’t that fast, since I suck at math. “But you can travel back thirty seconds,” I finally say. “You could have been there before the crash.”
“I’ve trained myself over time to go back thirty seconds. Then, I only got thirteen. All I could do was appear in my room when the crash happened and run down the steps to find the same scene. Every single time.”
Wind rushes around us, the rain falling harder, as if the storm is responding to the memory of his pain.
“Gods, Logan.” I shake my head, swallowing down a lump of tears in my throat. “I’m so sorry.”
“Me too.” He glances out at the raging ocean, and when his eyes meet mine again, they’re terrifyingly empty.
“But I killed the assassin after, and I made those thirteen seconds count. Learning where to cut to make him scream the way my mother had. Finding the exact angle to break bones the way my father’s had snapped.
Thirteen seconds, reset, try again. By the time I let him die, I’d killed him twenty-seven times.
And somewhere in those resets, I stopped being the boy who couldn’t save his parents, and became something that could make a professional assassin beg for the mercy I’d never give. ”
The confession hangs between us, brutal in its honesty, as I realize that this is what broke him. This is why he’s so controlled. Because he knows what happens when that control snaps.
And instead of running—instead of being horrified—I want to hold him until that empty look leaves his eyes forever.
“Twenty-seven times.” I don’t look away from him. “You made him pay for every second of pain he caused.”
“Does that scare you?” His voice is carefully neutral, but his shoulders are tensed, as if he’s bracing for rejection. “Do you hate me for it?”
“No.” The word comes out fierce. “But you know what I do hate? That someone was paid to murder your parents. That you discovered your power in the worst possible way. That you’ve been carrying this alone for four years, thinking you’re a monster for fighting back against someone who destroyed your world. ”
His control cracks further, and for a moment I see the boy he was—lost, grieving, and discovering darkness he never knew existed inside him.
“Four years.” His hands move to frame my face, rain streaming between us, sizzling where it touches our skin.
“Four years trying to understand why someone wanted them dead. Four years of being alone.” His thumbs trace my cheekbones, and there’s something deeply meaningful about each calm, precise movement.
“But ever since you kissed me in the woods during the Hydra trial, you’re the only person who makes me feel. ..”
I wait for him to find the word, but nothing comes.
“Human?” I try.
“No. You’re the only person who makes me feel alive.
” The weight of his confession hangs between us, rain pounding down like the sky’s trying to drown us both.
“You’re all I have left. And if anything ever happens to you, I’ll travel back over and over again to keep you here, with me, where you belong. ”
Thunder crashes overhead, and in the flash of lightning, I see the truth written all over Logan’s face. After what happened that night with his parents, he’s terrified of losing me, too.
“Hey.” I frame his face with my hands, forcing him to meet my eyes. “I love you, and I’m going to fight like hell to stay here with you. It’s you and me now, always. I swear it.”
He blinks away what might be tears, and then he kisses me again, softer this time. Like I’m something precious he’s afraid to break. And when he pulls back, the storm in his eyes has calmed to something quieter, but no less intense.
But I’m not done yet.
“You’re not the only one who’s alone,” I tell him, needing him to understand this.
“No one from my old life—not even my family—can ever know the truth about what I am. No one in the supernatural world, either. You’re the only person who knows, and who might ever know, my truth.
You’re the only person I can be myself with.
Which means you’re all I have now, too.”
His hands tighten on my waist, pulling me closer, as if I’m the only thing in the world to him that’s real. “I love you, Jade,” he promises, and there’s a quiet intensity in him that makes my breath catch. “Always. I need you to believe that, and to never forget it, no matter what. Okay?”
Pain crosses his eyes, his hold on me tightening, as if he’s scared I’ll disappear at any moment.
“I swear it.” I press closer and kiss him again, trying to make him feel how much I mean it. His heart beats faster, and I melt into him, wishing we could be closer, that I could be part of him and show him just how deeply I love him.
But not here. Not now, when we’re standing over the bodies of those who are dead because of us. Where we were targeted for simply existing in their structured world where people who are different will never be welcome.
When I pull back, he resists, as if he wants to stay here, with me, up on the Crown, forever.
Part of me wants that, too. But I force myself to focus.
“We need to get out of here. And then there’s…
” I pause, glancing at Thad and Oliver’s bodies, my stomach twisting at the reminder of every horrible thing that happened here tonight.
“I’m guessing Oliver told Thad about your time travel ability.
But why did Thad kill Oliver for it? Why not go straight to you, or to the Council?
And why did Thad want to kill me? And what did Oliver mean when he told Thad he wouldn’t let him get to Evie? ”
Logan glances at the bodies, then back at me, resignation in his eyes.
“Thad didn’t support the Council’s methods,” he eventually says.
“Oliver did. They got into arguments about it in our advanced studies course all the time. My best guess is that Oliver told him about me, or maybe Thad figured out what Oliver was hiding. As for what Oliver said about Evie, he didn’t want Evie to take the course because he didn’t want Thad’s ‘radical ideas’ planted in her mind. ”
“So Thad was trying to protect you by killing Oliver, so Oliver wouldn’t go to the Council about it?” I ask. “And then you killed Thad because he was going to kill me?”
“Thad did kill you. Multiple times.” His eyes go hard, like they did when he admitted to killing Miles. “And I’d kill him again for you. Without hesitation.”