“Hi,” he breathes back.
I shoot a mischievous glance his way. “You heard all of that, right?”
“Yes.” He floats closer. “You knew I was listening?”
“Of course.”
His invisibility only sharpens my other senses. Without a body to look at, I feel the bite of his power more vividly. I can track him as he approaches, the heat he carries casting a slow warmth along my spine. I’m certain that if I reached out for him—the way I did after I fell, the way I did this morning in the bridal shop and again downstairs—my hands would find him waiting.
The thought drags me back to the tarot cards, to chosen chains and willing bondage. We are bound, he and I. Not by iron, but a tether I can feel strengthening even as I pretend not to notice.
“I have something important to tell you,” I announce.
I drag my hands down my face and press my lids closed, as if pressure alone might force my thoughts back into order. I shouldn’t say it. I promised Nick I wouldn’t.
But the lure of the Spindle of the Gods crumbles like hot sand and blasphemy in my mouth. Everyone knows you’re notsupposed to meddle with death. Winter comes for everyone, and when it does, it is meant to be final. Souls who run from their reapers are meant for decay, and decay only. They feed the hungry mouth of the Dark One, the original, holy ghost.
Death is a release rather than a cruelty, and the dark souls’ ultimate demise is a cautionary tale. All who escape ice are bound for darkness.
The Mist Wars were sparked by that same poisoned idea, by the Mist King chasing true immortality in spite of the laws of nature. He managed to trick destiny itself, but at what cost? To cheat death is a tainted hope, dressed up as love or a desire for self-preservation, but rotten at the core.
The gods would turn their noses at me for even considering it. Even the Dark One was not strong enough to rewrite his ending, not strong enough to be made flesh again. And yet here I am, entertaining the sin of it, imagining a way to turn winter into spring, to cheat the truth that endings exist for a reason.
I shouldn’t talk about such things.
I swallow hard and keep my voice tight and contained as I shift gears and address the safer, more reasonable elephant in the room. “What happened this morning was a mistake.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
I grip the end of my braid. “I’d just broken off my engagement. I was angry and sad and confused.”
His breath rushes out, close enough that my skin prickles. “And I was what? Your rebound ghost?”
“Don’t be like that.”
A soft, bitter chortle follows. “Max, you kissed me like I was the last thing holding your world together, and now you’re pretending it doesn’t count?”
“That’s not—ugh.” Heat crawls up my neck. “It was a moment of weakness.”
I shouldn’t think about that kiss, and I definitely shouldn’t be whisper-fighting with an invisible ghost whose soul is only visible in the faint, trembling reflection of the windowpane.
“What are you afraid of?” he insists. “Catching a ghost disease? Ghost sperm, what?”
I hiss, scandalized.
Nick sleeps down the hall. A loud sound or voice, and he’ll hear.
“Well, I’m trying to understand the rules here,” he murmurs. “I’ve never felt more alive than when I’m with you, but I’m just to be written off as a weakness? As though kissing me was a mistake you just had to make to get over your fiancé?”
“I’m afraid of falling for you, you big jerk!” I whisper-yell.
Silence detonates through the room.
The shimmer in the window brightens. “You’re falling for me?” he asks quietly.
“That’s not what I said?—”
“Max. It’s exactly what you said.”
