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“Jade.” He turns to face me on the bed, his knee pressing against mine, and the electricity that jumps between us is faint and nothing like the confident spark I’m used to. “I need to say something, and I need you to let me finish before you argue with me.”

I close my mouth.

“There’s no proof I can give you that the bond isn’t affecting your feelings.” His hand is still wrapped around the token, as if it’s giving him strength to continue. “But you loved me before I fed from you. You stayed after the Geryon told you what I am, and that choice had nothing to do with a bond that didn’t exist yet. You screamed at me in a black fire pocket for trying to rewind time and erase your pain, because you wanted your feelings to be real even when they hurt. I love you in a way that has nothing to do with blood bonds or ankar tokens, because I loved you when you couldn’t control a single spark, I loved you when you pulled lightning from the sky even though I begged you not to, and I loved you when you looked at me after the Geryon and saw a monster. And I swear to you that I have never, for one second, stopped.”

My electricity surges back to life, and the spark that jumps from my knee to his is bright enough to throw shadows on the wall.

“That’s not fair,” I whisper, because he can’t say things like that and expect me to stay on my side of the bed with my arms around my knees and my walls up.

“I know it’s not fair.” The corner of his mouth shifts. “But it’s true.”

I uncurl my legs. My hand finds his cheek, and his skin is cool against my palm, the way it always is. My electricity pulses through the contact, and his eyes close and his breath catches, and I hold on because whatever my lightning does to him, it’s the most honest reaction he ever gives me.

“I love you,” I tell him. “Blood bond or no blood bond, Revenant or not, I love you. And if that turns out to be magic instead of me, then magic has good taste.”

He almost smiles, and the almost is enough.

I kiss him.

He tastes like coffee, pine smoke, and every good moment we’ve stolen since he saved my life in the Hydra trial. His hand comes up to cup my face, and the gentleness of it makes my eyes sting. Because ten minutes ago I was questioning whether my feelings were mine, and now I’m kissing him like he’s the only solid ground in the world, and maybe both of those things can be true at the same time.

“I love you,” he says against my lips, and my electricity hums through both of us in a low, steady pulse that makes his breath catch in the way that tells me my magic is doing things to his blood that nothing else can.

I pull him closer, we tip sideways onto the mattress, and the quilt bunches beneath us as his body settles against mine. The weight of him quiets every anxious thought in my head, and my fingers find the chain at his neck and trace along it until I reach the rings, and he shudders when my electricity passes through the metal into his chest.

His hand slides into my hair. My legs tangle with his. The electricity between us is building in that familiar, addictive way—cycling from my skin into his and back again, each pass stronger than the last. My fingers are still wrapped around the rings at his neck, his heartbeat is pounding through the metal into my palm, and this is the most normal I’ve felt since the Geryon broke everything open.

His lips trace down my jaw and along the edge of my throat, landing on the spot where he bit me this morning.

My lungs lock. My electricity cuts out. My entire body goes rigid beneath him, because his lips are pressed against the exact place where his fangs broke my skin, and the echo of the rush of heat I couldn’t tell apart from my own desire floods through me all at once.

He withdraws so fast my body doesn’t have time to adjust. One second his weight is holding me against the mattress, and the next I’m lying alone on a rumpled quilt, cold air pressing against every place his body used to be.

I sit up, and the chasm between us makes my heart hurt.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I wanted… I was fine, and then your lips were on the⁠—”

“You don’t need to explain.” His back is to me, and the control in his voice is the kind that comes from years of practice at swallowing things that hurt. “I shouldn’t have gone there. That was my fault.”

We sit in silence for a few moments. Him on the edge of the bed, me in the middle of it, and the rumpled quilt between us holding the shape of two bodies that were tangled together thirty seconds ago.

“At least I know this is the real version,” I finally say, needing him to know I noticed, and that I care. “If you’d gone back to fix it, your mouth would have skipped my neck, and I’d never know that in another timeline, I froze.”

“I made you a promise.” He turns around, his gaze so intense that it steals my breath away. “No more rewrites. No more curating which version of us you experience. I spent over two months letting you believe I was someone I’m not, and every one of those months was a lie I chose not to correct. Now I’d rather have this—you freezing, me pulling away, and both of us sitting here in the dark—than a version where I stole the truth from you again.”

I reach across the gap between us and lace my fingers through his. His skin is cool against my palm, and my electricity passes through the contact in a quiet pulse, and his fingers tighten around mine.

“Come here,” I say, and his eyes search my face for a long moment.

Whatever he finds must be enough, because he shifts back onto the bed and pulls me against his chest, his arms closing around me.

“We need to sleep,” he says, and his voice has lost the careful precision from a minute ago. It’s just tired. Deeply, thoroughly tired, in a way that makes me realize that today might have been the longest day of both our lives.

“Yeah,” I agree. “We really do.”

Neither of us moves for a few seconds. Then I pull back enough to reach for the hem of my shirt, and I pull it over my head, because sleeping in clothes has never been something my body tolerates.

Logan watches me, and he pulls his shirt off too, the chain with the rings catching the light as it settles against his bare chest. I reach out and press my palm flat against them, allowing my electricity to pass through the metal and into him. His eyes close and that sharp breath pulls through his teeth, which makes my heart do a little flip in my chest.