Page 100 of Hallowed Bones

“Stay,” I whisper, so low it barely exists.

His thumb brushes my lips. “Always.”

Long after my tears have dried and I realize where I am—the library in the manor—I find that I still don’t want to let him go. It’s been a while since I had arms that felt this hard and safe wrapped around me, and I don’t want to leave the feeling just yet.

“Do you want to tell me what your dream was about?”

Reyes’s voice cuts through the quiet like a rooster’s cry in the morning—startling even if expected and as inescapable as the rising sun. The question isn’t a surprise, but it still makes me flinch. The spell of our shared silence unravels all at once.

I shift where I sit, peeling myself off his lap and immediately regretting it. The warmth of his body disappears too quickly, replaced by the bare chill of the room and the awareness of his gaze dragging over me.

Goose bumps rise on my arms, my thighs. I’m wearing nothing but a sleep shirt and the thin lace shorts I hadn’t bothered to change out of after crawling into bed earlier, long after my actual lesson with Cameron. I should’ve stayed there instead of letting my restlessness bring me down here.

Reyes watches me, jade eyes gleaming in the flickering firelight, his pupils dark and reflective. Like he sees not just into me but through me.

I don’t answer at first. I scrub my hands down my face, trying to wipe away the dried tear tracks still embedded into my skin. “I just…” I pull my knees up onto the edge of the couch and hug them to my chest as my fingers dig into my skin. “I was thinking about it.”

“The dream?” he asks.

“No.” I shake my head. “Magic—touching it for the first time today … it felt like—” I pause, trying to find the word. “Like I’ve been living underwater for years, suffocating. Then, today, I felt what it actually was to breathe.”

Reyes sits there, quiet as I speak, but not for a second do I question if he’s actually listening to me.

“It came from me,” I whisper. “Not just from me but through me. It wasn’t dark. It didn’t hurt. It was…” Beautiful is too weak a word.

The fire crackles and a popping sound from the hearth is followed by embers drifting into the chimney. My eyes lock on the flames. It’s the only light in the otherwise dim room. I shiver and though the coldness I feel isn’t quite physical—I still lean away from the flames and press my back against the cushions of the couch.

Experiencing magic firsthand had been … an eye-opening experience. Everything was alive—brighter, louder, more colorful. Everything had bloomed and the universe had seemed to crack open inside of me, revealing all the loveliness of the world that I hadn’t been able to see before.

Perhaps that’s why the dream had chosen that moment to ruin. The phantoms that haunt me had taken that peaceful, happy memory and they had infected it with their darkness, violating my sense of freedom, of hope.

An old anger whispers against my heart. “Haven?” Reyes’s voice brings me back to the present, not so much erasing the rage as much as he just distracts me from it.

I continue to look at the hearth instead of him. The fire’s close, but the warmth doesn’t touch me.

Reyes moves. Just a shift—one thigh sliding forward, his hand braced on the back of the couch. He moves closer, and it feels as if the air is rearranging itself around him. My insides react, reaching for him, seeking out his heat, the security he represents. Protection.

“Cameron said you performed quite well,” he tells me.

I snort. “And look at me now.” I don’t release my legs to gesture. He has to know that if today was a success, then tonight has proven my failure. I cannot be one without the other. Everything must balance itself out. I can never have the good without the bad. I shake my head. “It’s pointless. I don’t know why any of you bother.”

Fingers latch onto my chin and yank my head to the side. Reyes’s gaze is dark, boring into me, and there’s a hint of outrage in his expression that surprises me. “Do you think you need to be perfect for us to accept you?”

My fingers loosen their grip, and I drop my legs back to the floor. Reyes doesn’t release me.

“It would be easier…”

His brows lower, casting shadows over his eyes in such a way that it almost appears as if they disappear entirely into twin black holes. My voice dries up. My words halt, no more forthcoming. He tightens his hold on my face, fingers spreading out for his palm to encompass my jaw.

“Perfection is in the eye of the beholder,” he says, voice low and dangerous. As if he’s daring me to challenge him.

“Ezra told me it was a dream.” The confession is barely audible, but it makes Reyes tilt his head, a small furrow appearing in his brow.

“Ezra?” he repeats as if making sure I’m saying the right name.

I nod. “I … asked why—how he could’ve been there—but he said it was an answer he’d have to give me later.” Reyes’s face doesn’t change. It remains impassive. There’s not even a flicker of whether or not he knows the secret behind Ezra’s ability to enter my dreams … which can’t be right. Reyes is the dreamwalker, after all. Why wasn’t it him?

I jolt as his other hand brushes my bare thigh. It’s as if I’ve been struck by lightning. A wire of electricity stretches between us, humming with energy. He’s close. Too close. My breath shudders in my chest. My heart betrays me, banging against my rib cage, screaming for him to notice the damn thing. To save it from me.