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Damn, damn, damn…

“Taly,” Skye said, and she growled. The man just couldn’t leave well enough alone.

Then there were hands on her shoulders, gently pulling her away from her anxious tidying.

“I’m trying here. I really am,” he said. “But I need you to help me.”

His face was soft, sincere. The same as his hands, cupping her face as if she were something fragile.

Of everything—the pounding headache, the mess, the complete inability to carve out any amount of peace to file away the cognitive fallout of twenty minutes of clinical death and maybe meeting god—thatpissed her off the most.

She wasn’t fragile. She’d survived worse than this,alone, with no one around to put her back together.

“Look, can we just sit down? You’re white as a sheet. I’m worried you’re going to—”

Taly jerked away. She didn’t need him fussing over her. She needed to move. Needed to bring order to the room, to her thoughts, to everything spiraling out of her control.

“You were under attack,” Skye pressed, voice thick. “We were in a place where we should’ve been safe, and then we weren’t, and this”—he gestured sharply—“shouldnotbe the first time we’re talking about psychic parasites, Taly. I can’t protect you from the things I can’t anticipate. What’s next, huh?” He tore at his hair. “Are the lampposts going to attack next time you walk down a dark alley? Because if so, I’d really like to know ahead of time!”

Taly slammed a book onto the shelf. “Now you’re just being ridiculous.”

She wasn’t looking at him, but she could feel it—his eyes boring into the back of her head. For several long moments, he just stared at her incredulously.

“Really?” There was something manic in his voice, a note of hysteria beneath the frustration. “So, psychic monsters that want to possess and devour you through dreams—that’splausible? But sentient lampposts with an ancient time mage blood feud—that’s crossing over into ridiculous? Good to know. I’m glad we found that line, because I’m losing track of just how many things want to kill you!”

“It’s not your job to protect me!”

“Yes, it is!” he roared, and she knew she’d touched a nerve. “It is and always will be my job to protect you because between the two of us I’m the only one who seems to care whether you live or die. You promised you wouldn’t keep secrets.”

“I wasn’t keeping secrets!” Taly snapped. “I just didn’t tell you because I knew you would freak out!”

Skye’s jaw clenched, a vein pulsing visibly at his temple. He was holding back, barely.

Except she could see it now. The storm of golden apparitions playing out around him, flashing through every impulse he was choking down.

One Skye exploded in anger, words flying like daggers. Another slammed a fist through the wall. Another stormed out as yet another hurled the nearest object across a room.

“Wow,” she said, low and sharp. “I never knew you were such a ticking time bomb, Em. All these things you want to do, but don’t—are you really that close to losing it all the time? Or is it just me who brings out the worst in you?”

A new apparition flickered—this one stepping forward, hands outstretched as though to shake her.

Taly let out a cold, humorless laugh. As if she neededmoreproof that he was insane for saddling himself to her. Usually, she enjoyed being right. This time, it was just a bitter pain in her heart.

“Seriously, I know we joke about it, but you really are a fucking masochist,” she said, each word a razor’s edge. “Why would you want to bond with someone who makes you feel like this? All I ever seem to do is piss you off. How is that worth it?”

Fury snapped off him like sparks. The air crackled around him. She’d never seen him this angry—not even in Strio, when they’d had their screaming match that resulted in a year of silence.

Yet even now, as the storm raged inside him, he forced himself to speak slowly. Calmly.

“You don’t get to be angry at me for the things I don’t do.”

Her mouth curled in something too bitter to be a smile. “We’ll see about that.”

“Taly—”

She was done.

She didn’t want to hear him defend the bond, try to justify something she already knew was doomed.