XXXVI
“...I told you, I went. Twice. Woods were clear. For now.”
The words drifted in as if they were moving through deep water. I floated beneath them, drowned in a heavy, unnatural exhaustion. The pain had quieted to a dull, distant throb; my body sank so deeply into sleep that even breathing felt borrowed.
A second voice answered, low and unmistakable.
Heaton.
“And Penny?”
“Shaken, but alive. Some guy named Tyler drove her home. By the time I circled back, the McCrae boy already had half the valley out looking for her.”
Then, with dry amusement:
“And he’s not going to stop. You should’ve let the shadows have him, Heat. One less heartbeat to worry about.”
Ford.
A sharp spike of guilt cut through the fog.
“If only it were that simple,” Heaton snapped. “She values his life too much. Which makes him inconvenient. Not expendable.”
The girl made a soft, unimpressed sound. “That’s a very living distinction.”
“And one you’ll respect while she’s tied to me.”
She didn’t sound cowed. Only entertained.
“Oh, I respect it,” she said lightly. “I’m just trying to keep up. So we’re babysitting the boyfriend now?”
The temperature in the room plunged.
A sudden, violent shift, as if someone had opened a door to the deepest part of winter.
“He’s not her boyfriend.”
The girl sounded even more amused. “Relax. I was checking where the line was.”
“You found it.” His voice lowered. “Now lower your voice.”
“Oh?” she asked. “Is she finally asleep?”
A log collapsed on the hearth.
The silence that followed was too heavy, too sudden.
I held my breath, body perfectly still, pulse thudding too loudly.
“He’s a complication,” Heaton said at last, his voice a low, cutting whisper. “And I’ve had enough static for one night.”
“Grief’s the loudest kind,” the girl said, a little too knowing.
“Grief. Anger. Love. It’s all the same.” His answer came sharp enough to cut. “And I’ve had enough of it.”
His voice dropped lower.
“For now, the tether works both ways. If he dies, I feel what it does to her. And I’m not too fond of the fucking noise.”
A soft, dry laugh.
“Oh, Heaton,” she said. “I have a feeling she’s going to be the loudest thing in your head for a long, long time.”
“Don’t start, Ruby. I have enough noise in my head without your commentary.”
Ruby.
“She’s one of those Anchor things, isn’t she?” Ruby pressed, ignoring him completely. “We bind ourselves to objects, Heat. To places. To things that last. This? Her? An October of all people?”
“I wasn’t looking for a permanent arrangement.” His boots paced the small cabin floor, each step clipped. “I was looking for a tactical advantage. This was a necessity. Nothing more.”
“A necessity?” Ruby’s voice sharpened, diagnostic and cold. “It’s a disaster. This was never the plan.”
“The plan wasn’t for her to die before we had the compass,” he countered. “If she had, the hunters would have won by default. I made an executive decision.”
“The compass?” Ruby scoffed. “You don’t tie your soul to another heartbeat over an item that may not even work. No, this is about her last name—both of them. You must’ve bet right, though, because the tether held.”
I felt it then.
A dense pressure in my marrow. My blood flowed through a colder, wider channel, expanding to accommodate the shadow he had grafted onto me.
“But you wouldn’t bind yourself to a sinking ship unless you thought you could steer it,” Ruby continued. “Are you trying to master the connection? Push it from both sides?”
“I’m monitoring it.”
“Monitoring.” She sounded delighted and horrified. “That’s what we’re calling it?”
“With enough control, it could become more than a tether,” Heaton said. “With enough time, it could be manipulated. Shaped.”
Control.
Manipulated.
My stomach turned.
Last night, he called me a solar storm.
This morning, I was an experiment.
“Or,” Ruby said, “it becomes something that takes you both down with it.”
“She won’t break.”
“No,” Ruby whispered. “Maybe she won’t. But they’ll still come for her. You know they will.”
The floor creaked.
Closer now.
“And then you’ll have to decide whether you’re trying to keep her alive . . . ”
Another pause.
“ . . . or keep her.”
The words hooked into my sternum and pulled.
Keep her.
Like an object.
A weapon.
A pet.
Panic kicked against my ribs—a wild bird beating itself bloody against the bars. I tried to stay still, to keep the mask of sleep draped over my face, but my body betrayed me.
The bond answered instantly.
It didn’t hum.
It punched.
Terror flared hot and electric through my chest, and the connection threw something back—a current of pure, cold fury that wasn’t mine.
I didn’t hear him move.
One moment, Heaton was a voice across the room.
The next, he was beside my ear, a pocket of arctic air pressing down on the bed.
“You’re very loud today, October.”
I didn’t have to turn my head to know he was there. The scent of pine and wet stone was overwhelming, a cold fog filling my head.
The bond wasn’t just a connection; it was total surveillance.
A live wire into my soul.
“Don’t bother pretending.” The floorboards groaned as he leaned over me, his form blocking the warm spill of morning light. “Open your eyes, Madeline.”
I forced them open.
The room sharpened in slow, bruising strokes: stone walls, dying embers, a frost-painted window leaking the first light of dawn. Pink. Lavender. A thin line of blue.
Morning.
I pushed myself up on my elbows, ignoring the way the room tilted. Ignoring the pain. Ignoring the cold. I leveled my gaze at him, the question burning in my throat.
“Keep me?”
Heaton straightened, arms crossing over his chest—a defensive wall of muscle and shadow.
Before he could answer, a dry voice cut through the tension from the corner.
“Oh, he’d keep you.”
Heaton’s head snapped toward the shadows. “Ruby.”
She lifted one shoulder. “What? She asked.”
The girl drifted closer, ignoring the low growl rumbling in his chest. She looked me up and down, a slow, appreciative grin spreading across her face.
Barefoot on the floorboards, she wore a faded day dress; the hem brushing her shins, and a frayed red ribbon tied back her dark, tight spiral curls. She looked no older than sixteen—a girl captured in permanent summer.
But her eyes were ancient.
Stormy and sunny all at once, as if she still hadn’t decided which mood to keep.
“And you weren’t kidding,” she declared, her voice ringing with genuine, unholy pride. “She’s so glowy.”
Heaton let out a weary sigh and dragged a hand over his face. His posture shifted into one of formal, reluctant obligation. He didn’t look at Ruby.
His eyes stayed on mine.
“Madeline,” he said, the clinical edge finally gone, replaced by something heavier. “This is Ruby. My sister.”
I stared at her.
The anger in my chest short-circuited into pure, baffled disbelief.
“Sister? You have a sister?”
“I have a headache,” he muttered to the ceiling.
Ruby didn’t move so much as flow. With a grace that defied gravity, she drifted onto the edge of the bed, the mattress barely dipping beneath her weight. Her curls bounced against her cheeks, bright and wild against Heaton’s rigid stillness.
She leaned forward, cloudy eyes locking onto mine.
“Listen, October,” she said. “He can definitely be an asshole. No argument here. But he’s an asshole with a plan.”
Heaton rubbed at his temples as if he could physically force the pain out of his skull.
“A terrible, convoluted, self-sacrificing plan he refuses to share with the class,” Ruby continued, “but a plan. The point is, he didn’t do this to you for fun. He did it because the alternative was you being dead.”
Her expression turned abruptly serious.
“And dead Octobers are a lot more complicated than live ones. Trust me.”
Heaton groaned. “Ruby, for the love of all that is quiet, stop talking.”
“I’m helping.” She beamed. “Besides, we need to get little Miss Glowstick home before her Boy Scout declares a statewide emergency.”
My stomach dropped.
“Ford is still looking for me?”
“Like it’s his holy mission.” Ruby reached into the air, her hand disappearing through a shimmer of heat distortion.
A crumpled brown paper bag appeared in her grasp, and she dropped it onto the foot of the bed with a flourish.
“Which is why we’re on a clock. I swung by your place.
Brought clothes. Jacket, boots, jeans. Things that aren’t . . . ”
Her eyes drifted to the oversized shirt I was wearing.
A sly, knowing grin spread across her face.
“ . . . that.”
Heat flooded my face. I clutched the collar of the shirt—the soft, worn linen my only protection against the chill and the unnerving scrutiny of two ghosts.
“You went to my house?” I managed.
Ruby’s grin widened, but her eyes slid past me to her brother, dancing with wicked amusement.
“Of course. Though it looks like someone already found you something to wear.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw Heaton’s jaw tighten. His attention flickered to me, then back to the fire.
Outside, dawn deepened, painting the stone walls in soft pastel colors. The world was waking up—search parties, frantic calls, Ford.
Questions waiting like open jaws.
But here, in the quiet aftermath, everything felt suspended.
Ruby helped me sit, her touch cool as mountain water. The movement tugged fire across my ribs, and I sucked in a sharp breath.
Her eyes dropped to the shirt.
“Absolutely not,” she said. “You’ll have to keep it.”
My face went nuclear.
Heaton, standing by the fire like a statue, turned. His silver eyes landed on the collar I was clutching, then flicked to Ruby.
“I’ll be outside,” he said, voice clipped.
The second the door shut behind him, the room lightened.
Ruby helped me wriggle into the worn jeans she’d brought. Every time the pain made me flinch, her cool hand steadied my elbow. She worked with practiced tenderness, like tending to a porcelain doll that had survived a great fall.
She helped me into the heavy jacket, tugging it snug over the shirt. Her fingers brushed my pulse—a fleeting, gentle touch.
“There,” she said, eyes dancing. “Now you look like you belong to the living again.”