Chapter 11 #2
Working with her was going to be a headache.
I headed straight for the showers, stripping out of my leathers and stepping beneath the hot spray.
Steam rose around me, thick and blinding, but it couldn’t wash the heaviness from my chest. The shadows finally faded into their usual low murmur, easy to ignore.
For now. I braced my forehead against the cold tile, letting the water run down my back. Everything felt heavier.
The bond. The whispers. The thought of Jasmine. Of Alaric. Of Ruin.
One tether had tied me to her, and no matter how much the gods wanted to force this on me, I refused to let it change anything.
They would not take my life. They would not take my choices.
Not now. Not ever. And yet, after I dressed, it was like my feet stopped listening to me.
Before I could think, I was climbing the dorm stairs toward the first-year wing, every step heavy and wrong.
I told myself it was nothing. Just restlessness.
Just the bond misfiring. Then I reached the landing.
Her scent hit me all at once: lavender and wildflowers, sharp enough to steal the breath from my lungs.
It coiled inside my chest like a hook, dragging me forward whether I wanted it to or not.
I followed it without thinking, straight to her door.
The shadows whispered softly. Asleep. A portal bloomed beneath my feet, soundless and dark, and I stepped through.
Gia was curled in her bed on the other side of the room, dead to the world.
My gaze snapped immediately to Ruin. Her blanket was tangled around her legs, blonde hair spilling messily across the pillow, sunlight from the stained-glass window catching the faint streak of red threaded through it.
The color glowed softly in the morning light, almost ember-like against the pale sheets.
One arm was tucked beneath her head, the other resting loosely at her waist. The sleeve of her nightshirt had ridden up, exposing the delicate curve of her forearm and the rune etched there.
The mark that tied her to Hemera. The same one that now bound her to me.
Even in sleep, the dark circles under her eyes lingered, shadows that never fully vanished.
Evidence of nights she didn’t truly escape.
I remembered, unbidden, how after Mackie died, she never slept right again.
Insomnia. Nightmares. Long hours staring at the ceiling and pretending she was fine.
I should have left. I needed to. Instead, I sank to my knees beside her bed.
My hand lifted before I could stop it, brushing a few loose strands of hair from her face.
The red caught against my knuckles before slipping away.
Her skin was warm. Soft. Nothing like the calloused hands or hardened steel I was used to gripping.
The moment my fingers touched her…silence.
Not quiet. Not muted. Gone. The shadows disappeared completely.
No whispers. No pressure. No hunger clawing at the edges of my mind.
Just stillness. Her breathing. And the faint pulse of the runes on her forearm, humming in sync with my own.
For the first time in years, there was nothing else. My breath caught. I leaned down, pressing my forehead to hers without thinking. And she responded. Not awake. Not conscious. But her forehead pressed more firmly into mine, as if her body recognized the bond even if her mind didn’t.
My hand slid to the back of her neck, holding her there gently, as if I let go the world itself might split apart. Lavender. Wild sunlight. Fire. It wrapped around me, intoxicating, overwhelming. And the silence… gods, the silence was bliss. A peace I’d forgotten could exist.
“Why did it have to be you?” I whispered so softly it barely disturbed the air. Her brows furrowed in her sleep. A fragile sigh slipped from her lips. And then reality slammed into me like a blade to the ribs. What the fuck was I doing?
This was Ruin. The girl I couldn’t stand.
The one who ruined everything just by existing.
I ripped my hand back as though I had been burned, shadows snapping tight around me as I vanished from her room.
Cold stone greeted me in the hallway. I leaned hard against the wall, chest heaving, pulse racing. I almost laughed.
This had to be some cruel fucking joke. The only peace I’d experienced in years, and it came from the girl I hated.
The bond was already making me do things I didn’t want to do.
Coming here. Touching her. Letting myself feel that stillness.
A fucking mistake. I dragged a hand down my face just as the whispers crept back in, low at first, then louder, pressing at the edges of my skull.
After that stillness, they grated like claws on stone.
That’s what Khonsu meant. She could quiet them.
Strip them away. Silence the darkness with a single touch.
And gods, some twisted part of me wanted it, and that terrified me more than anything else.
The thing was, the whispers hadn’t always been there.
They came when I was first marked, three years ago.
But since then, they’ve been everything.
My weapon. My armor. My constant in a place built to break you.
I remembered the first time I had truly listened to them, how close I’d come to losing myself to the abyss they whispered from.
And yet… without them? Without their presence filling the empty spaces when no one else could.
It felt like carving out a piece of myself and leaving it behind.