Chapter 4
Wes
I can’t breathe in there anymore.
The common room feels too small, too full of doubt and suspicion that tastes like copper on my tongue. My hands shake as I push through the back door into the garden, desperate for air that doesn’t carry the weight of Thane’s accusations.
It’s Bree. It has to be Bree.
The hunger claws at my stomach, worse than it’s been in weeks, but that’s not what’s making me sick. It’s the way everyone looked at each other back there. The way Stellan went silent and Rhett’s fire started building under his skin.
Like they’re already planning for war.
I press the heels of my hands against my eyes, trying to stop the spiral before it takes me under completely. The garden feels different out here—lighter somehow, like it remembers what peace feels like even if I don’t.
“It’s her,” I whisper to the empty air. “I’d know if it wasn’t her. Wouldn’t I?”
“Would you?”
I spin around to find Gray standing in the doorway, still as stone except for his eyes. They’re too bright, too focused, scanning the garden like he’s cataloging every shadow for threats.
“Don’t,” I say, backing up a step. “Don’t you start doubting too.”
Gray steps into the garden, closing the door behind him with deliberate care. He crosses to me in three quick strides, and before I can say anything else, his hands frame my face and he kisses me.
It starts gentle—his lips soft against mine, thumb brushing across my cheekbone like he’s trying to memorize the feeling.
But there’s something desperate underneath, the way his mouth moves like he’s trying to convince both of us that everything’s still okay.
When he deepens the kiss, I taste the fear he’s trying so hard to hide.
When he pulls back, he wraps his arms around me, holding me against his chest with more force than necessary.
“I’m not doubting,” he says quietly, but his voice is tight. “I’m trying to think.”
I should feel better in his arms. Usually Gray’s solid presence calms me. But right now his muscles are coiled like he’s ready to spring into action at any second, and his heartbeat is too fast against my ear.
“About what?” I ask, pulling back to look at his face. “About whether the woman we’ve all been in love with for months is suddenly someone else? About whether we’re all losing our minds?”
“About whether I failed her.”
The words knock the air from my lungs. “What are you talking about?”
Gray steps away from me and moves further into the garden, his movements too controlled, like he’s fighting something underneath his skin. “I should have stopped it. Then it never would have been able to take hold.”
“Take hold of what?”
“Whoever’s wearing her face now.”
I flinch. “That’s still Bree.”
“I’m not sure it is,” Gray’s voice is quiet, deadly. “Because when she looked at me back there, for just a second, I thought it wasn’t her at all.”
The admission hangs between creating distance I don’t want. Because Gray doesn’t make mistakes about people. Gray sees everything, notices everything, remembers everything. If he’s questioning what he saw…
“No.” I shake my head, backing up until my shoulders hit the garden wall. “You’re wrong. You have to be wrong.”
“I hope I am.” Gray’s hands clench into fists at his sides. “But hoping doesn’t make it true.”
I watch him pace along the garden path, and something cold settles in my chest. Gray doesn’t pace. Gray stands still and observes and makes calculated decisions. This restless energy radiating from him feels wrong.
“You’ve always protected her,” I say, trying to find solid ground. “You’re the one who kept us all together when everything went to hell.”
“I fell asleep.” His voice is flat, self-recriminating. “I should have stayed awake. Should have known she might go back to that chamber.”
“We all fell asleep.”
“I don’t.” Gray’s hands clench into fists at his sides. “I never sleep through the night. I keep watch. That’s what I do. But last night I was so exhausted I didn’t even hear her leave.”
The air around him shifts—subtle at first, then more noticeable. Like a pressure change before a storm, but concentrated entirely around Gray’s body.
“What’s happening?” I ask, because something is definitely happening.
Gray looks down at his hands like they belong to someone else. “I don’t know.”
But I do. Or at least, I think I do. The same way I can sense emotional hunger in a room, I can feel whatever’s building in Gray. It’s wild and desperate and completely at odds with his usual control.
“You need to calm down,” I say carefully.
“Calm down?” Gray’s voice cracks. “Bree is missing—or replaced, or corrupted, or dead—and you want me to calm down?”
“Gray—”
“I can’t protect her if she’s not really her!” The words explode out of him, and with them comes a pressure that makes my ears pop. “I can’t save someone who doesn’t exist!”
The air in the garden goes completely still. Even the leaves stop rustling.
I take a step toward him, hands raised like I’m approaching a spooked animal. “Hey. Look at me.”
Gray’s breathing is ragged, too fast, and there’s something wrong with his eyes. They’re shifting between gray and something else—something darker, more primal.
“I failed her,” he whispers. “Whatever that thing is wearing her face, it’s there because I wasn’t strong enough to keep her safe.”
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?” Gray’s fists clench tighter. “She needed someone who would fight for her without hesitation. Someone who would burn the world down to keep her safe. Instead, she got me.”
“She got someone who loves her.”
“Love isn’t enough.” The words come out broken, desperate. “Love doesn’t keep people from disappearing into chambers full of ash and mirrors.”
Something in his voice makes me step closer despite every instinct screaming at me to give him space. “Gray, you’re scaring me.”
He looks up at me then, and for a moment I see past the control and the careful observation to the raw terror underneath. “Good. Because I’m scaring myself.”
The pressure in the air builds again, and I realize what I’m seeing. Gray isn’t just having a breakdown.
He’s on the edge of something bigger. Something that might change him permanently.
“Whatever’s happening,” I say quietly, “we’ll figure it out. Together. Don’t leave me here thinking I’m the only one losing my mind.”
Gray stares at me for a long moment, and I can see him fighting something internal. Like there are two different versions of him warring for control.
“It’s Bree,” I say again, because I have to believe it. “It has to be Bree. Because if it’s not…”
I can’t finish the sentence. Can’t voice the fear that’s been eating at me since the moment she looked at Jace with that confident smile.
Because if it’s not Bree, then everything I thought I knew about connection and recognition and the way souls call to each other is wrong.
And I don’t know how to keep going in a world where I can’t trust my own heart to know the difference between truth and lie.
Gray doesn’t answer. He just looks out at the garden like it’s a battlefield only he can see, his hands still clenched, the air around him still humming with something that feels dangerous and wild and completely unlike the Gray I know.
And for the first time since this whole nightmare started, I wonder if we’re all about to lose more than just Bree.
I wonder if we’re about to lose ourselves too.