Page 14 of Wicked Bonds
By then, the hallways have gone fully silent: not even the scuttle of mice or the yowls and prowls of the familiars. Only the dead are left to pace the floor. I drift, weightless and jealous.
I tell myself I am only checking on her. That if she’s sleeping, I’ll leave. But even ghosts lie to themselves.
She’s asleep. She’s sprawled half-off her bed, curled around the arm with the mark, and a damp towel is bunched beneath her cheek.
I step into the room and the temperature drops, but I don’t think that she notices. I could watch her for hours. There’s something about the living at rest that is hypnotic, with their defenses down, their faces open and unguarded, their bodies a mess of inconvenient desires.
I drift closer, standing over her. I want to reach out, to brush the hair from her face, to do something gentle and forget for a minute what I am. The rules I keep are simple; there’s only one, really. Do not remind yourself of what it meant to be real.
But then she moves. The pain in her arm must be waking her, and she sits up, wincing. Our eyes lock.
“You again.” She glances at the wound, then at me. “Is there anything you can do? Like… ghost magic?”
I smile. “No. But I can keep you company.”
She nods, and I sit beside her on the bed.
We sit in silence, her breathing growing steadier, my own sense of longing metastasizing into something painful and impossible.
Without thinking, I reach for her hand. I expect the usual, my fingers pass through, a shock of cold, nothing else. But this time, my hand lands on hers as both of us gasp.
For one heartbeat, for the first time in more than a century, I am touching someone. No, that’s not right.
Someone is touching me.
She freezes, staring at where our hands connect, then at my face. Her eyes are wide.
It’s not normal. It’s not possible. This isn’t supposed to happen.
I flex my hand, testing the reality of it. The sensation is so intense I almost pull it back. Her skin is hot, feverish, alive, and I feel a current that has no business existing between a dead man and a living girl.
She should pull away. She doesn’t.
This isn’t normal. She isn’t normal.
Her mouth opens, maybe to ask why I look so goddamn scared, she says nothing.
For a long minute we just sit there, linked by this impossible point of contact. Then I do what I have wanted to do since the moment I saw her. I close my hand around hers and anchor myself to the world.
She closes her eyes, just for a second, and I can tell she’s remembering something she lost. Maybe the touch of another. Maybe nothing at all.
I have to leave before I lose what little self-control I have. Before I try for more. I stand, abrupt, and the connection breaks with a snap that leaves my whole body hollow. I flee, because that’s what I do, and this time I barely notice the way the world warps and bends around me as I go.
I drift back to my old corner of the attic, the one place the witches never go. There’s a little window that faces east, toward the river, and sometimes I like to watch the sun try and fail to reach inside. I sit in the darkness and flex my hand, over and over, hoping the sensation will linger.
It doesn’t.
Instead, I get memories.
A party after a ritual much like the one in the Great Hall tonight. There was music, and wine, and a girl with eyes like emeralds. Her name was Isabel, and she was the only person in this place who ever made me feel less alone.
We danced in the rain. We stole kisses in the library. We made plans to run away together, to break free, to live. I remember the taste of her lips, and the way her hand tightened on mine as they dragged us apart.
She betrayed me, of course. They always do. That’s the lesson of the Crescent Moon Coven witches. It doesn’t matter if you love them, if you bleed for them, if you die for them. The contract will always come first.
I don’t want to think of that anymore, so I think of Rose.
Of the way her hand felt in mine. Of the way she didn’t jerk away, even when she should have.
