I’d seen real glimpses of it in his eyes tonight, felt his broken heart in the tears that’d soaked my shirt.
But when he looked at me now, his eyes were clear, flickering with something new and shiny. Something that brought a warmth to my chest I couldn’t even describe.
Hope.
“Tonight,” he said through new tears, “just before you came in here, was the first time since Elena had pointed that gun at me that she gave me any indication that we might have a relationship again.” He smiled faintly, lowering his eyes and focusing on a loose thread in the sheet. When he looked up at me again, he said softly, “Querida, I died that night, didn’t I?”
It took me a beat to realize he was no longer talking about what had happened between him and Elena, but the warehouse battle. The sudden shift nearly gave me whiplash; it felt as if I’d been yanked back in time, back to those ugly moments of seeing him lying in a pool of his own blood.
“You… you’d been badly wounded in the fight,” I began, my throat thick with emotion. “Cut with a silver blade. Bleeding…”
“Badly wounded enough to die, then.” He shook his head, as if trying to clear away new cobwebs. “I remember trying to shift out of my wolf, and I couldn’t. Not all the way. I remember having all the heightened senses and instincts of the wolf, but the pain felt like a man’s pain. The fear was… indescribable.”
“There was a while there where you got kind of… stuck,” I explained. “You couldn’t quite shift one way or the other. Ronan and Elena didn’t know how to heal you.”
“So howdidthey heal me?”
I pressed my fingertips to his lips and shook my head. I wanted to shush him, to tell him there was no point in revisiting that awful night. That the important thing was that he did survive, never mind the hows of it all.
But secrets and lies were the twin snakes that kept looping back to bite us, time and time again. Whether it was Emilio lying to his sister about how her family died, or Liam lying to me about our relationship, or Ronan keeping my deal a secret, or me lying to him initially about what I’d done to Bean… Secrets like ours were heavy burdens, and eventually, they came crashing down on us, and the truth slithered out, all the more venomous for the time it’d had to fester.
I made a vow right then and there that I’d never lie to the men I loved. Not even to protect them.
“The warehouse was burning,” I said, “and I was on one side with Ash and Darius and Jael, along with the witches we’d just liberated. We were running for the exit, and I just… I saw you go down. I got to you as quickly as I could, but you were… you were in bad shape.”
I told him the details, as best as I could remember.
“Ronan promised he’d save you, and so I left. We had to get the witches to safety. So I came back here with Ash and Darius and everyone else, and we just waited for word from Ronan and Elena. When they finally showed up, you weren’t with them. Ronan said that Liam arrived in the form of the great raven to claim your soul. He saw it leave your body. You were… mutilated.” I shivered as the images flooded my mind again, unbidden. Emilio lying in all that blood, his chest cleaved open, his body shifting between man and wolf, stuck in limbo. “Liam took you, but Ronan and Elena didn’t know where. You were just… gone.”
Snuggling in close, I told him the rest of the story—how I knew he wasn’t totally gone from us. How Haley and I did the blood spell, and I’d tracked them to my realm. How I’d fought Jonathan, how when I finally found Emilio and Liam, it looked as if they’d been waiting for me. I explained the ritual Liam had guided me through, trying to remember all the details—the moonglass, the magic, the feel of his soul as I gently guided it back home.
“And together,” I finished up, “Liam and I brought you back. I’m not sure what happened in the realm after that—there was a strange earthquake sort of event, but then it stopped. And you called for me. That’s when we knew you were okay. I took your hands in mine, and then… Well, the next thing I knew, I was waking up in this bed next to you, and Haley was shouting for Ronan and Elena, and someone told Lansky to call the medics back to the house. I was fine the next day—just needed a little rest after the energy expenditure from calling up and using so much magic. You needed a little more time.” I kissed his shoulder again, dropping my voice to a whisper. “And here you are. Back with me where you belong.”
Emilio was silent for a long time, and though I was dying for his thoughts, I let him be. It was a lot to process, coming back from the brink of death.
“I heard your voice,” he finally said, a little awestricken. “Felt your presence all around me. I felt this… this energy pulling me toward the gates. I guess some part of meknewI had died—that I was supposed to go through them. But suddenly you were there, your spirit. It was pulling me, too. And no matter how strong the call coming from the other side of that gate, I knew I didn’t want to go through it. Not as long as you were standing on the outside, calling me home.”
“As if I’dletyou leave without me.” I tried to laugh, but Emilio seemed to be stuck in that moment, uncertain of how to feel about the whole thing.
“Gray, that kind of magic… There’s always a cost.”
I offered a faint smile. I’d said something similar to Liam when he’d made the moonglass. “Doesn’t mean it isn’t worth it.”
He nodded, but I could tell he wasn’t convinced. He brought my hands to his mouth, pressed a kiss against each palm. When he looked at me again, he said, “What was the price,querida?”
“I don’t know. Honestly. I connected with Liam briefly last night—He’s still in my realm, still hunting Jonathan. He told me he’s been called to appear before… well, I think he called it a cosmic tribunal? We don’t know exactly what that means for us yet.”
“Maybe nothing,” he said.
“Maybe nothing,” I echoed, but the words felt as thin as the frost on the edges of the window.
“Gray, you shouldn’t have—”
“Don’t even think it.”
“But—”
“I have the power to raise the dead, Emilio. To manipulate souls. I don’t know why that power was entrusted to me. Or how it even works, exactly. Or what my bigger purpose is in all of this. I don’t even know if the Silversbane prophecy is legit, or just some wishful thinking by generations of witches desperate for answers and hunters even more desperate to get their hands on that kind of mojo. But Idoknow that I can’t lose you. That in that moment, I was facing that very real possibility of having to say goodbye to you forever. So yes, maybe thereisa bigger consequence, an astronomical price tag we can’t even imagine, and it’ll drop on us all like an atomic bomb when we least expect it. But I would do it again in a god damn heartbeat. You know why?”
