Page 97 of Shadebound
Thought a thousand things before...
“I love you,” I said. “Okay? There. I fucking love you. And if you do something reckless like that again, I’ll kill you myself before the killer gets the chance.”
His face split into the slowest goddamn smile I’d ever seen.
And then he startedlaughing.Not mocking. Just pure, feral joy, like he couldn’t help it. Like he’d been waiting for this exact moment, and now that it was real, it had broken something loose inside him.
“God, you’re such an idiot,” I muttered.
He wiped at one eye like he was getting misty from joy. “I’m giving you ‘til Saturday.”
My dry eyes blinked. “What the hell does that mean?”
He grinned wider. “You’ve been sleep-deprived, underfed, hallucinating, and possibly emotionally compromised. You might just be experiencing a prolonged psychotic break.”
I scoffed, hands clenching. “I’m going to stab you.”
“I’m serious,” he grinned. “If you still want to say it on Saturday—if you come to me fully fed and rested andnoton the brink of collapse—then I’ll believe it.”
I gave him a dead stare. “I just said it now.”
“Yeah, but I want to see if you can say it again without threatening to kill me.”
“Iwillkill you.”
“Sunday,” he said smugly, stepping back, already turning away like this conversation hadn’t just destroyed my entire nervous system. “And if you still mean it by then, I’ll make surethe whole academy knows just how much I love you too. All night long, Heartache. Then every day after that we can pretend to be friends again if you want, so long as you stay in my bed and bounce on my—”
“Shush.” I warned as I stood there, stunned. Silently screaming.
He shot me a wink over his shoulder.
“Race you to the dorms, bestie.”
Then he jogged off, still grinning like a feral idiot.
By the time the dorm doors unlocked, I was vibrating with fury.
I stalked inside, shoving the door open harder than intended before collapsing onto the bed like I’d been dropped there. My whole body shook—not just from anger at my life, Zayden, or everything else. But from the hollow, gnawing weakness that had been building all day.
My head throbbed and my vision blurred; every muscle leaden yet jittery, strung too tight. My skin crawled as if coated in grit and ghost hands, the cuff having mended the bones and stopped the bleeding but unable to scrape away the raw, overused ache in my limbs or the sick, worn-out hum through my nerves. I still felt chewed up and spat out, the taste of it thick at the back of my throat.
I reached inward.
For Beelzebub. For Silk. For Korrax.
For anyone.
Nothing. Silence.
My head was quiet—an unnatural stillness, like something vital had been scooped out and left gaping. It wasn’t the comfortable quiet of safety; it was the absence of every voice I’d ever relied on, the hollow where their whispers should have been. The stillness pressed against the inside of my skull until it felt like it might split me apart.
The door creaked open. Draven stepped inside, moving like the air itself was pressing him down. Blood streaked his face, smeared across his mouth and jaw, stark against his skin. A split in his lip, crusted over. His curls clung to the damp of sweat and blood. His shoulders were hunched, his whole body drawn in as he closed the door with the quiet care of someone trying not to wake a predator.
“What happened?” My voice came out too sharp, already braced for the answer when he locked eyes with me.
He signed,I don’t want to talk about it.
“Draven—”
