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Ignatius's expression softened slightly. “I'm thinking your father told a frightened seventeen-year-old enough to make him afraid of himself, and for whatever reason, he either didn't know or didn't tell you the rest. I'm not going to compound that by handing you another fragment and letting you decide what it means.”

I wanted to argue.

The problem was, I couldn't.

My father's voice surfaced from somewhere I usually kept locked down. Warnings about attachment. About responsibility. About never assuming what anyone felt around me was entirely their own.

Then my mother's voice replaced his.

Ne pars pas. Maxim, s'il te plaît, ne pars pas.

I'd left anyway.

Two days later, she was dead.

For fifteen years, every woman who became too attached, every phone number I had to block, every encounter that turned into something I hadn't intended had reinforced the same lesson.

Then there was Melanie.

And now Ash.

Except Ash had never felt like any of them.

Maybe that should have reassured me.

It didn't.

It terrified me.

“What if I've already affected him?”

Ignatius didn't answer immediately.

That silence told me more than reassurance would have.

“I don't know enough about what's happening between you and Ash to answer that responsibly.”

My stomach tightened. “That's not exactly comforting.”

“I'm not trying to comfort you. I'm trying to make sure that when we have this conversation, you understand what being lifebound actually means rather than what you've spent fifteen years believing it means.”

Hope stirred anyway, small and vicious enough to hurt.

I crushed it before it could take hold.

I'd learned a long time ago not to trust anything that promised absolution too easily.

“What do the records say?”

“A great deal, which is why this isn't a conversation we're having in pieces. I'll show you the council records. You can read them yourself rather than taking my word for it.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“That's not good enough.”

“It will have to be for tonight.”