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AFTER THE REVELATION of my fractured soul and Valec’s disappearance, Hazel successfully persuaded Mariah, Zoe, Lark, and William to rest in the back rooms of the Lounge for the day. Zoe took Valec’s phone to her room, still hoping to hear back from Elijah. They were offered hot showers and warm clothes, and after I waved them all away, my friends finally relented.

Nick took much more convincing to leave my side, but I pressed him backward down the hallway with my own two hands against his chest, our gazes locked in equal determination and care. He only left after I promised to rest once I saw the girls off safely.

In truth, it was me who did not wish to be seen.

I spend the rest of the morning with Lucille and Emil, listening to them talk not about souls or Regents or Rootcraft, but about the repairs at Volition. Family gossip. Rumors about a restaurant opening across the street from Emil’s. They let me wander behind them as they clean up some of the mess from our early breakfast and prep food for a late lunch. None of the others emerges from their rooms looking for food, so Hazel joins us and the four of us eat quietly while we wait.

By the time the first family arrives at the Lounge, it is late afternoon. We hear a car rolling up the unmarked gravel driveway outside the building and Emil texts Valec to alert him. A few moments later, he receives a text back. “All clear,” Emil rumbles with a smile. The next cars arrive over the course of a few hours.

Lucille and Emil greet each set of parents outside the door and welcome them in through an eight-foot-wide gap in Valec’s ward. I stand out of the way in a shadowed corner behind the bar as they enter. If any of the family members notice the dragon-shaped skull over the neon sign outside the Lounge, they don’t pay it any mind at all; their eyes are only for their recovered daughters, their spirits pointing only toward reunion.

I watch as Joy is folded into her weeping mother’s arms and as the both of them become enclosed by her father’s body. An hour later, I see a bespectacled little brother collide with Melanie’s legs after darting ahead of her father’s eager jog. Next, Amber and her parents and three siblings collapse into a tearful, laughing heap just inside the curtains, not even making it as far as the main room. Finally, Nora’s mother and grandmother arrive, weaving their wide brown arms around her in a tight braid.

Each time the girls embrace the members of their family, and every time I see a face contort with emotion, I feel the relief of something lost being returned. A heart, back where it belongs. A soul, in its right place.

I’ll never be able to hug my mother again, but I’m glad that the girls can. As for my father? I’ll have to be satisfied knowing that he’s safe. Even if I saw him again, I don’t know how I could let myself hug him knowing that, on some level, I’m part of the reason he lost me in the first place.

Even here, Erebus’s voice finds me: How do you think they’ll feel when you remember everything about yourself, but not them?

Valec might hate that his reaction to me was predicted by one of his enemies, but Erebus has been right about so many things that I can’t say that I am surprised. I knew an explosion was coming. I just didn’t know from whom, or realize how much damage had already been done. How much could never be undone.

Nora is the last to leave, late in the evening. She spies me hidden in the corner and, after asking her mother and grandmother to give her a moment, calls me over. We meet in the middle of the Lounge, just as we had earlier this morning. The gold in her gaze is gone now, her ancestors’ connection closed safely. She studies me with soft brown eyes.

“You take care of yourself, Bree.” When she hugs me, my arms rise around her instinctively. After a moment, she steps away to take a last look at the Lounge. The empty tables with chairs overturned on top. The aether swirling in bottles behind the bar. The second-level loft shrouded in odd-shaped shadows beneath the skylights. “You got a nice crew. Don’t know what y’all’re up to, but be safe, okay?”

“Yeah, I… I do have a nice crew.”

Nora gives my hand a final squeeze then leaves to join her family. Emil had offered to open his restaurant up and cook everyone a nice dinner, and the families were more than glad to take him up on it. I’m sure that’s where she’ll be headed now. I don’t know for certain if Emil’s offer had an ulterior motive, but my gut tells me that Emil and Valec had conspired to get the girls and their families as far away from the Lounge as possible, as quickly as possible, in case Erebus or the Order found their way back to us. I don’t think I’ll see Emil again anytime soon, and for that I’m relieved. One less person in harm’s way.

I promised Nick that I would seek him out as soon as the girls departed. I know which hall will lead me to his warm bed and even warmer body. I also know that I would lose myself in him, seeking solace from my own thoughts, and, for some reason, I’m not quite sure I deserve that.

I’m not ready to let him take my misery away.

With my emotions swirling, I turn away from the three hallways and the strange echoes of an empty nightclub. I grab a heavy winter coat from the pile of clothes Lucille left on the bar for the taking and climb the stairs to the second floor, pausing at the locked door of Valec’s office. A shaft of light shifts beneath the doorway, like someone has moved across the room, then stopped. I swallow and walk past it down the hall.

When I emerge from the rickety elevator onto the empty roof, the moon greets me through Valec’s ward from behind softly bloated clouds. I slip on the coat, throwing the hood up over my curls to protect my ears, and aim myself toward an old wooden garden bench facing the low wall perimeter of the roof’s edge. As soon as I collapse onto it, the dark country night folds over me like a heavy blanket, and I fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.

I sense another presence on the rooftop before I hear the soft steps. My eyes snap open to find winter stars still shining overhead, but now they are accompanied by the thin amethyst and navy streaks of dawn playing tricks on my eyes from the horizon. I jerk upright, yanking my hands from the deep pockets where I’d buried them—and a warm hand rests heavy on my shoulder in response.

“You’re safe.”

My chest loosens immediately. I relax against the carved back of the bench, turning my head up to meet Nick’s soft gaze. He releases my shoulder to press a steaming mug into my hands. “From William.”

While I cradle the mug, he rounds the bench to settle beside me, stretching his long legs out on the gravel. I notice he’s taken a coat from the available pile too, and changed into jeans and a heavy sweater. Just seeing the warm clothes on him makes me acutely aware of the frigid air. My cheeks sting from exposure, and the thin dress under my coat feels laughably inadequate.

But the hot tea is perfectly timed and more than welcome, and so is the company. The tea along with Nick’s quiet reserve tells me that he didn’t come up here to pull me away from my rooftop respite, and for that I am grateful. A whiff of the mug tells me something of William’s intentions, too. “Chamomile.”

“My nonprofessional prescription,” Nick murmurs, “but William agreed.”

We sit in silence for a beat, until I look at him. “Did you know?”

He knows what I mean without my having to elaborate. “I knew something had been taken from you, but I didn’t know what it was.” Frustration pulls at his mouth. “Souls are, apparently, a different kind of magic. I can’t see them. Wish I could.”

I consider his answer. Consider the ease with which Nick found me here on the roof. The ease of sitting with him now, even when it’s so cold out that my teeth might start to chatter.

“You… see me , don’t you?” I whisper. “And I don’t mean with your powers.”

He turns to look at me. “I think we see each other. Now, and before all of this.” A pause. “And I don’t mean with my powers.”

“Probably better that you can’t see souls with your magic vision.” I chuckle softly into the mug, sipping. “If you’d told me at Penumbra that the Shadow King of Annwfyn possessed part of my soul, and that I might not ever get it back, I probably would have run screaming into the woods, Mikael’s affective ward be damned.”

He stares up at the sky. “Literal woods or metaphorical woods?”

I huff into the tea. Let the steam blow against my nose. “Either.”

A pause. Then: “Would that be so bad?”

I expect to hear amusement in his tone, see it on his face, but when I look at him, it never comes. “What do you mean?”

He turns to me, attention sharpening. “I used to think that the Order as a society was broken, but watching you navigate it, knowing what they’ve done to you because of it, being away from it myself, showed me that it’s not broken . It’s working exactly as designed. A wheel, drenched in hate and control, churning. Every time you wield your power, every time you own the right to speak, the Regents make you the lightning rod for their evil.” He hesitates, then reaches a hand to my face, pushing past my lined hood to hold my cheek in his blessedly warm palm. “Listen to me. You don’t owe them anything, Bree. No one deserves your suffering.”

I close my eyes, letting his words wash over me. Feeling found, even when all I want to do is hide. “What if my soul is fractured forever?”

“Then you have already begun to live your new forever, and live it well,” he says quietly. “Which is more than many with fully intact souls can claim.”

I open my eyes to meet his patient gaze and swallow around a lump in my throat. “So if I ran off screaming into the woods…? Literal, not metaphorical.”

A smile tugs at his mouth. “I’d point them in the opposite direction.”

My eyes sting. “And if I chose to just… not be the Scion of Arthur and decided to live as a normal human girl?”

“Mm.” His hand slides down my cheek, circling, until he gently cups my nape, massaging the muscles there with heated fingers. “I’m listening.” I shiver, then, but not at the cold. I feel the quiet strength in his grip and see the invitation in his patient gaze, both there for me to accept.

In a single long breath, I let go.

I relax the tension in my neck until my skull rests in the support of his warm hand. My eyes fall shut, breath leaving me in a silent shudder.

I didn’t realize how much I’d been holding until he offered to take it.

He hums, satisfied, and presses deeper into the tight cords beneath my ears.

“Would you forget me?” I murmur, voice drunk with pleasure.

“I could lose my entire soul… and still never forget you.”

“Please don’t,” I whisper. “I can’t recommend it. In part or in whole.”

His lips brush across mine, soft and too brief, before he leans closer to rub his cheek lightly against my own. With my eyes closed, the warm stubble at his jaw is comforting and electrifying all at once. “I’ll take that into consideration.”

I take bravery from the darkness. Pull the most frightening question up from my depths to breathe it into existence, because Nick makes it safe to do so.

“Do you think I made a mistake?”

He holds my face in both his hands until my eyes open. “No.” His gaze searches mine, soft yet sharp. “Your choices save lives. And often, your own. Your existence, in whole or in part, helps people. Makes the world around you better. I could see that before you were Awakened by Arthur. Now when I look at you… If I could offer you even a fraction of the life you deserve…”

Tears fill my eyes at his words.

He uses a thumb to swipe a tear away. “If you need to go, I won’t force you to stay.”

Another dip into my well of bravery. An impossible question and a wish, cast into his waiting gaze. “And if I wanted you to go with me?”

“I’d go.” He tilts my chin to press a lingering kiss to my mouth. “And never look back.”

“Never look back?” I breathe.

“Never.”

“And if I want…?” My breath turns shallow, my skin burning beneath the winter coat.

His brows lift in question. “If you want…?”

“Actually,” I murmur, “that might be the end of the sentence.”

His eyes darken. “I see.” Without breaking our gaze, Nick slips the cup of tea from my hands. He studies me silently, turning those too-perceptive eyes to every tiny betrayal written on my skin. My parted lips, the rapid pulse in my neck, the rise of my chest. Then, he moves to set the mug on the low wall, body twisting away, pausing. He sets the mug down and turns back to give me his full attention. “If you… want. ”

“Yes.” I nod quickly. Pleading without words.

His mouth quirks. “Bree…”

My name in Nick’s mouth is intoxicating—I want him to say it again. “Yes?”

But this time, he says it differently. “Bree.”

If Nick has ever uttered my name like that before—breathy, low, a warning—then I’m glad to have forgotten it. I shudder at the sound, and at the open desire on his face as he watches that same shudder travel down my body. His hands find my waist, as if to catch my reaction between his palms. Trap it. Feel it for himself. When I swallow, his gaze drops to track the motion at my throat, then drags its way back up to my face again. Something heady and hungry prowls behind his features, and I’m suddenly, irrepressibly, eager to set it free.

“Our enemies are still out there,” he murmurs.

“Out there,” I whisper. “Not here.”

Nick’s expression flickers. His fingers tighten at my sides until I gasp at the pressure. Until I squirm in my seat. He absorbs my responses, appreciative. Knowing. “Your quest—”

“Is what I make it.”

“I’m not your fiancé anymore.” The low timbre of his voice ripples across my skin. “You don’t have to pretend.”

“I know,” I rasp. “Neither do you.”

Nick’s jaw tenses. We hold each other’s gazes for a sharp, burning second. A match, struck. The storm in his eyes, gathering between us.

Until it breaks.

A low curse erupts from him and he dives forward, capturing my lips with his, igniting us both. Our kisses at Penumbra felt like clouds gathering, like thunder in the distance. This is an unleashing.

“We weren’t pretending,” he groans.

“No,” I pant. “We weren’t.” His mouth works down my jaw to my throat, searing my skin until my eyelids flutter. “Even then, when I didn’t know you and we were lying to everyone else, it was… we were…”

“What were we, B?” Nick murmurs, voice strained as he pulls back to meet my eyes. My heart thumps under my chin, at the bruised places where he’d kissed me. “Even then?”

The grip of his broad hands wrapped around my thighs frays my mind at the edges, but still… a phrase surfaces. A clear resonance pulling us together.

“You and me,” I breathe, smiling.

“Yes,” he says, voice rough, “you and me.”

Those words— our words—settle in my stomach and burn like embers. I let Nick pull me into his lap and guide my legs to either side of him. In turn, he lets me explore his mouth, his jaw with my lips. When a low hum becomes a moan, we both chase the sound, seeking its source—

Nick pulls away with a gasp, silver-blue mage flame flashing in his irises. It radiates from both eyes, smoky and electric, before dimming. As if he’s reining it back. Shuttering his vision as he looks away.

That won’t do.

“What do you see,” I urge, gently turning his chin, “when you look at me?”

When he faces me again, the magic in his eyes flickers… then flares.

Lightning between us, summer rain in winter.

“I’ll tell you.” Words fall from him, then. Nick paints reverence across my throat and seals wonder to my mouth. He whispers my own magic into my skin. His hands slip down and down past the edge of my coat to grasp the long skirt of my dress. He tugs the thin fabric up and up until his fingers find my waiting skin, my arched spine, my rolling hips. His molten voice floods my veins, cascading through me, until I am heat itself. A sun in a body. “I’ll show you.”

Letting go and holding tight.

Falling and climbing.

Forgetting and remembering.

All at once.

Long moments later, I pull away, gasping. Nick’s head tips back against the chair, a languid, pleased smile stretched across his face. His thick hair is a mess of deep tunnels from my desperate fingers, while his eyes reflect the sunrise behind me as their glow fades. My borrowed coat lies unzipped and forgotten somewhere on the roof—a joint effort, I think. Winter air meets my exposed hips and thighs, but my body is too feverish from Nick’s clever hands to care.

We stare at each other, chests rising and falling in sync with our ragged breaths. I gently tug at his ripe, shiny lower lip; he nips at my thumb. I graze my knuckles across the square shape of his jaw, exploring; he responds with a low, satisfied rumble. I hook my fingers into the belt loops of his jeans; he holds me tight as I lean backward to watch the sky over us turn pink, then orange, then a rich, glowing amber. Our breathing slows. Nick’s hands flex at my rib cage, fingers still hot on the skin beneath my dress, but he does not pull me closer or ask me to speak.

Nick lets me think. Lets me become who I need to be in the circle of his arms. Around us, the forest begins to wake. And still, he watches and waits.

Until I know what I want to ask next.

The thought sends me down to him again—and he surges to meet me. As the world dawns, we claim each other’s mouths. Call and response.

When I finally whisper, “And if I want to burn it all to the ground?”

His answer is a quick grin against my lips. “My blade is yours.”