He hadn’t known how incomplete he’d felt before, but now…Grayson can feel him, truly feel him, and for the first time in days, Grayson feels whole.
“Holy shitballs!” Winnie shouts, her hair lifting in weightless strands around her face.
The curtains snap against the windows, and the wind tears through the room like a living thing, tugging at sleeves and kicking papers into the air.
Grayson remains pinned in the chair, Rowan’s jaws locked on his pants, anchoring him against the invisible gale surging from his body.
“Grayson!” Nimue shouts as his IV stand blows over. “You have to slow the flow. It’s too much all at once!”
Again, Grayson catches sight of the Healer’s cool blue magic flowing into Ansel, undisturbed by the storm he’s causing in the small room.
Drawn like a lure, he follows that healing blue light straight into the core of the miasma.
A toxic tentacle snaps out, latching onto Grayson’s magic in retribution—cold, dead malevolence seeping through the connection.
It burns, scorching at the light, making Grayson startlingly aware that within the black, there’s another presence.
A resonant signature.
Not Ansel’s soul, and not the Healer’s magic.
Leaving Sasha to his work of untangling those tentacles, Grayson traces the oily conduit all the way to the end—across miles of dark, barren earth, straight into the heart of the beast.
And he recognizes it instantly.
The heart of that Devil: Aleksander Withers.
Grayson wants to expend every strand of energy in their soul, every grain of magic to obliterate this evil. Gathering himself he pulls, and pulls, and pulls until—
There are strong arms around his neck, and a cool, small hand on his neck calling him back, grounding him in the present, with the sweet scent of vanilla, baking bread, and pine.
Nix.
Grayson can’t get back to his body fast enough, clamping down on The Plain until it’s his usual minuscule trickle—just as he opens his eyes.
The Healer has been lifted clean off the floor, his feet flying behind him while he holds Ansel to the bed to continue his work.
Nimue and the others are on the other side of a wavering sheet of air, behind her erected shield, protecting themselves from Grayson’s storm.
Nix must have breached her barrier and launched himself onto Grayson from across the room.
As Grayson’s feet land on the floor, he holds his soulmate close to his chest.
“Holy shitballs,” Winnie mutters again.
“I’ll see your ‘holy shitballs’ and raise you a ‘what the fuck,’” Leo adds.
“I concur,” Nimue says, smoothing her hair.
Grayson can’t find words to explain and wouldn’t even if he could.
Nix’s mouth is on his, soft nibbles to his lower lip and tongue licking at it as he eases the renewed ache in their soul now cut off from the overflowing tide with the last vestiges of their magic.
“Gray, you scared me,” Nix mutters against his lips. “You were drawing so much…”
“Fuck, I’m sorry. Are you okay?”
“I’m really good, weirdly. Better, now that we’re all here—and alive.” He throws the last over his shoulder at Jay, who’s being propped up by Leo in the doorway.
