XXXV
The words hung in the air: a vow and a threat.
It won’t be you.
The ringing started before I understood what it was.
At first, it was only pressure—a low, ugly thrum in my teeth, as if I’d bitten down on a live wire. Then it climbed. Up my jaw. Behind my eyes. Down into my chest, where the bond had gone from a dull ache to something bright and violent.
My hands flew to my ears.
It didn’t help.
The sound wasn’t coming from outside.
It was inside.
Heaton’s head snapped toward the window. His whole body went rigid. Then he shot to his feet, a curse leaving his mouth, low and sharp.
“Damn it.”
He glanced at the heavy brass watch on the table, frustration cutting clean through his expression.
“Right on time.”
“What—what is?” I gasped.
The vibration wasn’t just in the air. It rattled my ribs, syncing with the strange, cold thrum in the center of my chest.
“Dead Time,” he bit out.
I stared at him through the noise. “What?”
“Three to four.” His voice remained flat. Controlled. “Some people call it the witching hour. Same thing.”
“It feels like . . . ” I swallowed hard, chest tightening. “Like I’m standing under a power line. Like the entire world just turned on.”
The pressure spiked so hard that my vision blurred. I folded forward, one arm wrapping around my ribs while the other stayed clamped over my ear.
“It’s the hour when everything on the other side gets louder,” he said. “Stronger. Meaner. Most people sleep through it. Their brains filter it out.”
His gaze cut to me.
“But you aren’t most people anymore, are you?”
I sucked in a breath that shook all the way down. “You could’ve mentioned that.”
Something hard moved behind his eyes.
“I would’ve,” he said, “if I hadn’t been busy keeping you alive.”
That should have irritated me. Instead, it barely registered. Because the thrum in my chest had synchronized with the ringing in my skull—pulse answering pulse until I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
He stepped closer, eyes fixed on me now, assessing me fast.
“The bond’s unstable during Dead Time,” he said. “This is your first one. Your system doesn’t know what to do with it yet.”
I shook my head once, hard. “Heaton—”
“Lie down.”
I couldn’t move fast enough.
He crossed the room, caught me by the shoulder, and guided me back against the mattress before my body could decide to fight him. Pain flashed along my ribs. The ringing climbed higher.
“Easy,” he said, though there was nothing soft in it. “Don’t make me do all the work.”
I glared at him, breath uneven. “You’re delightful.”
He looked me over once—shirt twisted, blanket half-fallen, one hand still braced over my chest—then stripped off his jacket and tossed it over the chair.
My stomach dropped.
“What are you doing?”
“Fixing it.”
He planted one knee on the mattress.
The old bed dipped under his weight.
My pulse kicked harder.
“Heaton.”
“You can keep glaring at me,” he said, “or you can survive the hour. Pick one.”
Then he climbed fully onto the bed.
Not under the blankets. Not at first.
Just close.
One hand braced beside my shoulder, the other dragging the blanket higher over me, trapping some of the cold in place. The mattress shifted again as he settled along my bruised side, long and solid and entirely too close.
The effect was immediate.
The ringing didn’t vanish, but it dulled at the edges, as if his presence were catching part of the current before it could slam through me.
I went still.
He felt it.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “That’s the point.”
His eyes dropped to my ribs, to the place beneath the shirt where the cold, branching ache still lived.
“I need to check the damage,” he said, voice low and impatient.
Before I could protest, his hand moved to the hem of the borrowed shirt. His fingers rested on the fabric.
He paused, and his eyes locked with mine.
“This is me being polite.”
The ringing surged again, a scream of static tearing through my skull.
“Oh my God, Heaton,” I snapped. “Just do it.”
He slid the fabric up my hip. His knuckles brushed the bare skin of my stomach, a trail of fire and ice that made my breath catch. His hand continued its ascent, a silent, guiding pressure until it rested flat against the bandage wrapped around my ribs.
The branchwork under my skin flared in answer, cold fire blooming beneath his palm.
I sucked in a harsh breath, my body arching off the bed.
His eyes narrowed.
“Hm. Still has a temper.”
I scowled at him through the ringing. “Are you talking to me or my ribs?”
“To the part of you trying to fry itself.”
His palm stayed where it was, steady over the ache.
The shrill sound ebbed another degree.
Not gone.
Just less.
Enough that I could separate it from my pulse again.
The corner of the blanket slipped. He caught it with his free hand and drew it back into place without looking, efficient and distracted, as if modesty were an afterthought he’d remembered too late.
Now he was half over me, one leg caught in the blankets, his weight braced carefully on the mattress. Close enough that the cold of him pressed through the air in waves.
The ringing dipped again.
He noticed.
“Closer works better.”
I turned my head enough to look at him. “That sounds like a line.”
His mouth almost moved. Not a smile. He looked too tired for that. But something brief and humorless flickered across the severe planes of his face.
“October,” he said, voice dropping into a low, gravelly rasp that made the hair on my arms stand up. “If I wanted to flirt with you, I’d do a hell of a lot better than this.”
Then the bond flared again.
Cold and bright and awful.
A static wave rolled through my sternum, and a sharp sound tore from my throat before I could stop it.
“Make it stop,” I gasped.
His expression changed immediately. All pretense of detachment vanished.
He shifted closer, the mattress groaning in protest. This time, there was no hesitation. He pulled me fully against him, one arm firm at my back, the other spanning lightly over my ribs to keep me still.
The room quieted.
Not fully. But enough.
Enough that I could breathe again. Enough that the ringing dropped from unbearable to distant.
“Breathe,” he said.
“I hate this,” I choked out, though I wasn’t sure if I meant the hour, the pain, or that he was suddenly everywhere.
“I know.”
I stayed frozen in his hold, every nerve too aware of the cold line of him, the controlled strength in the arm at my back, the fact that he had apparently decided this was happening and my opinion had missed its window.
“This is insane,” I whispered. “You know that, right?”
He didn’t answer. His hand only spread once against the blanket over my ribs, steadying me as another weaker pulse moved through.
We stayed like that for a moment—the fire snapping low; the wind scraping at the cabin walls, the hour itself pressing against the room as if it wanted in.
My hand, which had been frozen at my side, moved of its own accord.
It slid up his chest.
The heat of my fingertips smoked against the hard line of his collarbone.
He went utterly still.
I tipped my head back, and my gaze found his in the dim light. The silver of his eyes seemed to shift, pulling me under with them. The logical part of my brain—the part that remembered he was a ghost who had just tied himself to my soul without giving either of us a way back—was screaming.
But the rest of me . . .
The rest of me was quiet.
Captivated.
I leaned in.
His hand tightened at my back.
“Madeline.”
That should have been enough to stop me.
The tether pulled again—warmth answering cold, pulse answering current, two ends of the same live wire straining toward contact.
He moved first.
Just enough to catch my chin between his fingers and stop me there.
His eyes searched mine, and for the first time all night, there was something almost pleading in them.
“That’s not you,” he whispered.
I went still.
“That’s the bond,” he said. “It wants the gap closed, and it doesn’t care how it gets there.”
Shame burned through the haze.
“I . . . ” My face went hot. “I know that.”
“No,” he said, releasing my chin with a restraint that looked painful. “You don’t. Not yet.”
He eased back toward the edge of the bed, keeping one hand firm over the blanket at my ribs.
“It’ll do that,” he said. “Especially at first. Especially during Dead Time. You’re full of adrenaline and soul-static, and the bond is looking for relief.”
His eyes held mine.
“That doesn’t make it a choice.”
The rejection stung more than the broken ribs.
He glanced toward the watch on the table, then back at me.
“There are forty-five minutes left,” he said, voice returning to that clipped, clinical tone. “The bond will stabilize faster if you’re unconscious. Sleep. Your body will heal better while you’re under.”
I watched him, throat tight. “You’re staying?”
“I’ve had a century to get used to the quiet, October.”
His thumb made one final, involuntary sweep against the fabric over my side.
“I can handle forty-five minutes of your noise.”
He looked toward the fire, his profile settling back into that severe, unreadable mask.
“Close your eyes,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I wanted to argue.
I wanted to tell him the reflex felt a lot more real than he was admitting. I wanted to ask what was real and what was the bond.
But my eyelids were heavy, and the deep, bruised parts of my body were finally, truly starting to rest. The ember under my sternum stayed warm, a localized sun in the middle of a winter storm.
“Heaton . . . ?” My words slurred, the blankets pulling me down into a soft, pine-scented darkness.
“Yeah?”
“You stepped off a cliff with me.”
“I noticed.”
“That was . . . ” My breath caught halfway between a laugh and a wince. “Really stupid.”
He was silent for so long that I thought he hadn’t heard.
Then, quietly:
“Sleep, October.”
His voice was the last thing I felt before the darkness took me.