XXXVII
“You’ve been pissed since we left town,” he said at last.
He kept his eyes on the winding road, one hand resting on the wheel, the other draped over the center seatback.
“If you’re going to say something, October, say it.”
I kept my eyes on the windshield.
“I’m not fond of the fucking noise.”
A low chuckle rumbled in his chest. The sound surprised me—warm and rough, dragged out of some easier version of him I hadn’t met before.
“Yeah,” he said, glancing at me. “I had a feeling you were awake for that.”
The confirmation sent a fresh wave of anger through me, but the edge of it was dulled by the strange calm radiating from him. He seemed . . . looser. Less rigid. Dangerously close to amused.
“So, what was that?” I asked, nodding toward the dusty ashtray. “The Ghost Flower. You do drugs a lot?”
He laughed again, genuine this time.
“Drugs?” He turned his head, the silver in his eyes too bright. His mouth curved, slow and lazy. “It’s a plant that grows out of the ground. Arrest me, officer.”
“So, you just . . . smoke away your feelings?”
“Something like that.”
His eyes returned to the road, posture entirely too relaxed.
The casual deflection was a wall.
“Well, what does it do?”
He let out a low, thoughtful hum. Then he looked at me again, pinning me with a gaze that was pure, unrepentant sin.
“You feel it through the bond, don’t you?” he asked. “That little buzz?”
He leaned in a fraction, and the space between us charged.
“That’s just a taste, October. I don’t think you could handle a direct hit.”
My entire body flushed.
“What? No. I don’t—I don’t do drugs. I barely drink.” I turned sharply toward the window. “I was just curious.”
Heaton chuckled, deep and satisfied, the sound vibrating through the car. Then the playful edge receded, leaving something heavier behind.
“It quiets the static,” he said, voice distant. “The living broadcast everything. Fear, joy, lust. A constant, screaming chorus. Ghost Flower takes the edge off.”
He fell silent, then added, almost to himself, “Though you’re a different kind of noise. Louder. Clearer.”
My heart hammered against my ribs.
“So that’s what I am to you? Noise?”
He took a corner smoothly; the Nova hugged the road with unnatural ease. When he spoke again, dry amusement threaded through his voice.
“What else would you be?”
“A tactical advantage?” I shot back, the words tasting like poison. “I thought I was the brightest thing you’d seen in a hundred years. I didn’t realize you meant I was a high-voltage battery you could use to jump-start your war.”
His jaw locked.
“Madeline, you don’t understand—”
“Oh, I understand just fine.” My voice shook with exhaustion and cold fury. “If you wanted a weapon, you should’ve anchored yourself to a gun.”
His hands tightened on the wheel.
“But you tied yourself to me. And if you think for one second you’re going to steer this—steer me—you’ve seriously underestimated how willing I am to take us both down.”
“Madeline—”
“Don’t.”
I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t. Not while I could still hear the clinical echo of his voice calling me a necessity. An arrangement. Something to be monitored.
“You saved my life. Fine. But let’s not pretend it was a rescue.”
He went still beside me, his presence cold and dense.
“I did what was necessary,” he said, the words vibrating through my ribs as if his voice traveled along the bond itself. “If you want to hate the physics of it, hate them. But don’t doubt the result.”
His gaze cut to me.
“You’re alive.”
“Alive,” I echoed, staring at the road ahead. “And tuned in. Whether I want to be or not.”
The car didn’t slow.
It swerved.
Heaton wrenched the wheel hard, tires crunching over gravel and dead leaves as the Nova slid onto the shoulder and stopped. For a moment, he didn’t look at me. He just stared through the windshield, knuckles bone-white against the steering wheel.
“Ruby was right,” he said, voice low. “This was never the plan. It was never supposed to be permanent.”
He finally turned.
For the first time, he looked truly lost. The silver in his eyes wasn’t fractured now. It was clouded with a storm of his own making.
“From a strategic standpoint,” he said, “it’s the most catastrophic mistake I have ever made.”
The anger in my chest faltered, wary confusion slipping through the cracks.
“Then why?”
A harsh breath left him; pure frustration pulled through his teeth.
“I can’t give you a choice in the tether. I can’t untune you. That’s the reality of it.”
He looked away, jaw working as if he were fighting his own instincts.
“But I can give you a choice in this.”
He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small, sheathed knife.
It was all black, all wicked angles.
I stared at it, wide-eyed and breathless, my spine pressing hard against the seat.
He held it out to me.
Hilt first.
“This is iron,” he said, voice low and serious. “Cold-forged. It won’t kill me. Already dead.” His mouth barely moved. “But it can hurt me. One of the few things that can. It will break my concentration. Sever the connection long enough for you to run.”
He pushed the knife into my hand. My fingers trembled as they closed around the worn, wire-wrapped hilt. It was heavy and solid.
Real.
“If you think I’m a monster,” he said, “if you think you’re just a weapon, then you have a choice. You can end this. Right here, right now. I’ll be incapacitated long enough for you to get back to your life.”
His voice dropped.
“I won’t stop you.”
Then he let go, and the full, cold weight of the knife settled in my palm. He leaned back against the driver’s side door, creating as much space as the small cabin allowed. It was a forfeiture. A gesture of trust so absolute, so insane, it stole the air from my lungs.
I looked down at the knife, my thumb brushing the cold pommel.
He was giving me the power to hurt him.
To run.
To make him pay for crossing a line neither of us could uncross.
For one reckless heartbeat, I imagined it: the blade sinking in, his body folding, the tether snapping quiet for a few stolen seconds while I tore out of the car and ran down the mountain without looking back.
The fantasy came easily.
The reality did not.
He was watching me, his expression a mask of surrender, but his eyes . . .
His eyes reflected me. The Ghost Flower had polished the silver of his irises into mirrors, and I could see my own terrified face staring back from their depths.
They weren’t the eyes of a monster. They were the eyes of a man who had made a catastrophic mistake and was offering me the only thing he had left to fix it.
A weapon.
And a head start.
But what would change? The Lanterns were still out there. My dad was still missing. And whatever had happened to me—whatever I was now—wasn’t going to disappear just because I put a knife in Heaton Dashwood and bolted for the trees.
I’d still be tuned in.
Still tethered.
Still frightened.
And worse—
alone.
My grip tightened around the hilt.
Heaton didn’t flinch. Didn’t try to talk me out of it. He only watched me, as if he had already made peace with whatever answer came next.
That made it harder.
God, that made it so much harder.
Because if he had pushed—if he had smirked or threatened me—maybe I could have hated him cleanly.
Instead, he handed me a weapon.
“I know I forced this on you,” he said quietly.
His attention flicked once to the knife, then back to my face.
“I know I can’t hand you your old life back. Or untangle what I did.”
Fear lanced through me.
Fear of him. Of the bond. Of the vast, terrifying things I still didn’t understand.
And beneath it—
that same reluctant, infuriating pull.
“Well,” I said, my voice trembling before I forced the edge back into it, “next time, maybe try a plan that doesn’t involve hijacking somebody’s soul.”
His lips curved into a dark smile.
“In my defense,” he said, hands lifting, “when I found you at that party, you were literally dressed as divine temptation.”
Heat pricked my cheeks, sudden and nuclear.
“I’m dead, October. Not blind.”
“You’re still a jerk,” I managed, though the sting had gone out of it.
“And you’re still holding my knife,” he countered softly.
My eyes dropped to the blade one last time.
Then, with a steady hand, I slid the iron back into its sheath.
The decision settled over me, heavy and irrevocable.
My answer.
Not because I forgave him. Not because I trusted him.
But because stabbing him wouldn’t answer a single question I still needed answered.
Leaning forward, I tucked the sheathed knife into the inside pocket of my jacket.
My fingers brushed the cold linen of his shirt, and a spark jumped between us.
When the knife disappeared from view, something unreadable flickered across his face—gone before I could decide whether it was relief or resignation.
“Right,” he said, the word a soft, final breath.
He turned back to the wheel, and the engine roared to life.
The Nova eased off the shoulder and back onto the road, the knife hidden beneath my jacket, cold against my ribs as the canyons disappeared behind us.