Fear means it’s real.
I continue to stare into the fire, turning her words over in my mind.
Fear may also mean I’m losing control. But I’ve known that for a long time now. And fear also means I’malive, after so many decades of feeling like I’m just drifting through each day, unmoored and untethered, more a phantom than a man.
As if in response to my thought, there’s a tug in my chest, like a thread pulling taut.
Maeve pulls away from me, her brows pinching together. “This feels different from last time,” she says, tapping her chest. Her gaze flicks up to meet mine.
I agree. Whatever connection lingered after the first feeding, it feels intensified now, like something that before was drifting has now anchored itself.
“Is this normal?” she asks.
I give one small shake of my head. “No. I’ve never experienced this before.”
“Then what does it mean?”
I don’t have answers for her, and I’m not used to not having the answers. It makes me flex my jaw and grit my teeth.
“I don’t know,” I say, even though it pains me. For a brief moment, concern flickers through her eyes, mirroring the discomfort sitting inside me. I take her chin in gentle fingers and tip her head back, tracing my thumb over the soft spot beneath her vivid violet eye. “But I’ll figure it out.”
She offers me a small smile, then wraps her arms around me again, pressing her ear to my chest, where my heart beats in rhythm with her own. “Are you worried?” she asks.
My gaze flicks again to the fire in the sitting room. And as I watch it dance, something stirs inside me, a sensation I’m not familiar with.
It feels like a storm. Like the first hint of lightning crackling across the sky.
This isn’t how feeding works, I think, slipping my arms around Maeve’s body and holding her tight to my chest. The thought takes up residence in the back of my mind, refusing to be kept at bay.
As we stand there, I determine it best not to answer her question. Because I don’t want to lie to her. And the more closely I pay attention to the sensation inside me, the morecertain I become of one thing: Whatever connection ties us together, linking our two hearts as if they’re one, it’s not fading. It’s growing stronger.
And I have no idea what it means.
Chapter 42
Maeve
THE CAMPUS IS SPRINKLED WITH snow. It crunches under my and Poppy’s boots as we walk across the grounds, our breath steaming around our mouths in the cold air. The late-afternoon sky is a clear blue, the sun already making a slow descent toward the horizon, and the air is just cold enough that the snow and ice refuse to melt, clinging to the castle’s stone and the bare branches of the trees dotted around the courtyard.
My cloak rustles around my ankles, and Poppy and I pause to let two first-years run past, slinging snowballs at each other.
“Is it just me,” Poppy says, “or does it feel like there’s a lifetime of difference between us and the first-years?”
“Definitely not just you,” I say. Briefly, I think back to our first year here together. Everything was so new and so different. Alina wasn’t yet bonded to Raelan, Lyra was still setting fire to things accidentally, and Poppy was so quiet that it was hard to pull a full sentence out of her.
Now . . . Now everything has changed.
“I can’t believe our last first semester is almost over,” Poppy says as we continue our walk. We’re headed toward the Whim, Poppy’s favorite place on campus—even in the winter cold.
“Me either.” I glance down at her, with her soft lavender hair and the sunlight glinting off her glasses. And it almost makes me want to go teary-eyed.
I don’t know what I’m going to do without these amazing women around me. Alina and her royal eye rolls, Lyra and her dirty jokes, Poppy with her quiet curiosity and perfect cups of peppermint tea.
The four of us are a family now. But next year, we’ll all go our separate ways.
“Let’s not talk about it,” I say quickly. When Poppy glances up at me, I add, “It makes me too sad. And I don’t want to be sad today.”
Her smile turns soft. “Okay.”
