Cole’s snarled curse dies in mid-word. I hold my shirt through the heavy silence, knowing what they’re seeing: the dark pink slashes etched across my light brown skin in a vicious record of violence and pain.
Salvatore’s voice vibrates with fury. “That fucking scalder. Tell me he got what he had coming to him.”
Slowly, I lower my blouse and swivel back around. “I’m not sure. For a long time, I thought whoever attacked me got away. But the way things have gone here… I think it might have been Kenneth. Pushed to do it by the same woman. He died there too.”
Cole’s jaw works. “That still doesn’t—for it to be actual proof?—”
I left my satchel with the parring knife I’ve still been carrying upstairs. I hold out my hand toward Salvatore. “Can I have your switchblade?”
Salvatore cuts his gaze toward Cole. “I’ll happily stab him if that’s what you’re planning.”
The corner of my mouth twitches upward alongside a bittersweet pang of my heart. Even after everything he’s heard… he is still all in with me.
No matter what my conjured voices said based on three years of bonding, I can’t imagine my original Salvatore coming through my confession unshaken in the early weeks of our union. But this Tore has proven he can take his devotion to new levels of ferocity.
For a second, I can’t breathe through the recognition of just how much I love him too.
“I’d rather none of you were stabbed,” I say, “but thank you.”
Salvatore hands over the switchblade from his back pocket. I flick it open, brace myself with my attention focused on Cole, and dig the tip of the blade into my thumb.
Salvatore makes a noise of protest, but it’s barely a scratch. And a second later, it’s not even that.
A flicker of soothing warmth gathers around the spot, the skin seals over, and all that’s left is a bead of blood I swipe away.
Cole looks down at his hand. A corresponding scratch has formed on his thumb.
“Well,” Byron says, “that looks pretty compelling to me.” He glances toward me and pauses. “Does that mean… if all that is true… Is your aunt going to send you back when you’ve finished with whatever she wanted from you?”
An anxious crease has formed in his forehead, as if he’sworried I’m going to say yes even after everything he’s just heard.
I shake my head. “I thought so at first, but… she admitted that she can’t. As you’d probably assume, it was really hard just bringing me here. Finding the right reality to send me back to is apparently so much harder it’s beyond her. So you’re stuck with me. I mean, you don’t have to be. You have your glim now, and?—”
Byron is at my side before I’ve registered the movement, looping his arms around my shoulders. My heart stutters with a jolt of pure joy.
He dips his head next to mine. His voice comes out hoarse. “I told you yesterday that I’m not going anywhere. Not without you.”
“Hey,” Salvatore objects. “She’s not all yours.”
Of course, Cole has to ruin the moment. He seals the scratch on his thumb with his own magic and scowls at the bunch of us. “This still hardly proves anything she said.”
Byron firms his jaw. “Matches can share memories. She could show us her old world.”
“She could show you or Cosgrave,” the professor retorts. “I’m not waking up my glim just to see what illusions she’d conjure up, and I don’t trust you two to see through them when you’re so blinded already.”
Exhaustion rolls through my body. What more does he want from me?
The other comments the men next to me have made, the secrets I’ve learned about them, light a glimmer of inspiration.
I lift my chin. “There are other ways to prove it. I was your match for three years in my own reality. Most things there were pretty much the same as here. I’m sure I know things I couldn’t if another version of you hadn’t confided in me. Things you haven’t wanted anyone else to know.”
“That’s an awfully hollow statement.”
“We could get into it right now.” I flick my gaze toward Asher and back. “If you don’t care who hears. Should we start with your parents, or?—”
Cole flinches. He strides forward with a hasty gesture for me to follow him. “Over here, now.”
“Wait a second,” Salvatore starts.
