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Chapter Twenty-Seven

ELLIE

“When language fails, touch becomes truth.”

Love Songs of the Mountain Provinces

The door clicks shut behind me, too quiet for the storm raging in my mind.

My fingers rest on the latch, still shaking slightly, as echoes of what just happened keep flowing through me.

The connection has faded, but the memory burns bright.

I can still feel Sacha’s lips on mine, the impossible closeness of his mind touching my own, and the faintest echo of him, stubborn and residual, like a pulse I can’t quite silence.

My legs carry me across the floor without conscious direction. I sink down on the bed, pressing my fingers to my temples.

What just happened? One moment I was asking him to show me his power, and the next we were ? —

Heat blazes across my face and down my neck. I wasn’t planning to kiss him. I’m not even sure it was entirely my decision. When my fingers touched that shadow-raven, something broke open between us. A door that isn’t supposed to exist, ripped wide without warning.

For those few moments, I wasn’t just me anymore. I was both of us at once, experiencing everything from both sides. His thoughts, his feelings, his perfectly ordered mind with its endless contingency plans. Each decision branching into a dozen possible futures.

And beneath all of that, something he keeps buried so deep he barely acknowledges it himself. Loneliness that stretches back far beyond his imprisonment in that tower, an emptiness woven so tightly into him it no longer feels like absence at all.

I close my eyes, but that only makes the memory sharper.

His hands tangled in my hair, drawing me closer with unexpected gentleness. The surprising softness of his lips belying the power straining beneath his skin. The way his usually impenetrable control shattered completely when our minds connected.

But worst of all is knowing he experienced my thoughts too. My confusion, my determination to go home, and the uncomfortable truth that’s been growing inside me … the part of me that’s starting to wonder if I want to.

“Stop,” I whisper to the empty room. “Just stop.” I jump to my feet, needing to move, to outpace the thoughts hunting me down.

This isn’t real. It can’t be. It’s just the result of whatever weird magical connection happened when I touched his shadows.

People don’t suddenly develop telepathy and then kiss virtual strangers just because they’ve seen inside each other’s minds.

There has to be a rational explanation. There has to be something solid to hold onto.

Except … he’s not really a stranger anymore, is he?

After everything we’ve been through together.

The tower, the punishing journey through the desert, the danger in Ravencross …

the patrol he killed without hesitation.

I’ve seen more sides of him th an probably anyone else alive.

And now I’ve crossed into a place no one else ever has—inside his mind.

I freeze when I catch sight of my reflection in the polished metal mirror on the wall. The woman staring back doesn’t look like an intruder anymore. She looks like she belongs.

Brown hair falls in waves down her back, midnight blue dress with silver stars that shimmer in the dim light. Nothing like the disoriented woman wearing Chicago winter clothes who first arrived in the desert, desperate to go home.

The strange silver flecks in my eyes seem brighter now, radiating outward from my pupils in subtle patterns. Those weren’t there before. My eyes were brown. Ordinary. Unremarkable. It’s another sign of whatever strange magic is working its way through me in this world, changing me cell by cell.

What did he say when he first saw me in this dress? Transformed . And he’s right. I am transforming … in ways that terrify and exhilarate me in equal measure. Like there was something hidden inside me that has simply been waiting for permission to surface.

The evidence surrounds me. The lightstone that shattered during the Veinwarden meeting. The cup that heated without flame at the celebration when our eyes locked across the room. The kiss that somehow connected our minds, removing boundaries I didn’t know could be crossed.

I shake my head, pacing the length of the small chamber, each step leaving me further from the woman I was, and closer to something I don’t recognize.

One bizarre, magically-enhanced kiss doesn’t change anything. I still need to find a way home. Chicago, my apartment, my life—they’re waiting for me … aren’t they?

The question hangs in the air. The certainty I’ve clung to since arriving in this world now feels shaky.

What if there isn’t a way back? What if whatever brought me here was a one-way door, closed and locked behind me?

And what if … what if part of me is starting to wonder if staying here would be so terrible? If this transformation is not something happening to me, but something I was always meant to become?

“No,” I say firmly to the empty room. “Focus on what matters.”

And that starts with getting out of this dress.

It takes me almost half an hour to free myself, twisting and turning while I reach for the silver hooks holding the back together. The fabric is soft but unyielding, clinging as though it doesn’t want to let me go. But eventually the midnight-colored silk pools around my feet.

The simple sleeping clothes left folded on the bed feel thin and unfamiliar against my skin, a poor armor against the things unraveling inside me.

I wash my face in the basin of cool water, scrubbing hard enough to sting. Trying to erase the memory of his lips on mine. Of the weight of his mind, full of strategy and calculation and an endless, grinding vigilance.

Afterward, I stretch out on the bed, and stare up at the ceiling while I try to organize my thoughts. Tomorrow, Sacha said he’ll begin teaching me how to control whatever abilities I’m developing .

That’s good. Practical . The key to finding my way home might lie in understanding how I affect this world’s magic.

But the thought of facing him after what happened makes my stomach twist.

Will he pretend nothing happened? Analyze it with that cool detachment? Or worse, file it away as another tool to be used when it suits his plans?

Because one thing seeing inside his mind confirmed beyond doubt is that he’s always planning. Always calculating. Every action, every word, positioned like pieces on a board I can’t fully see. And now I’m part of it. A wild card he doesn’t fully understand, and therefore can’t fully control.

Sleep seems impossible with my mind racing like this, but exhaustion eventually drags me under.

My dreams are fragmented.

Chicago streets become mountain passes. The tower turns into Stonehaven. Familiar shapes bend and break into unfamiliar patterns, stitched together by seams that shouldn’t exist.

Through it all, shadows move. Not aimlessly, but with purpose, gathering into half-recognizable forms before dissolving again. And beneath the shifting dreamscape, a voice calls to me. A voice without words, whispering meanings I don’t understand.

I wake to a firm knock at my door, disoriented and groggy. Pale light filters through a small ventilation shaft high in the wall, suggesting early morning.

“Yes?” My voice comes out rough with sleep .

“It’s time.” Sacha’s voice carries through the door, as cool and formal as ever, as if last night never happened.

His footsteps retreat before I can respond. Sitting up, I push tangled hair away from my face, while reality reasserts itself. The formality in his voice stings a little. I should be relieved. I should be glad everything is normal. But apparently I’m not.

I’m not even sure what I expected. A heartfelt conversation about our feelings? Acknowledgement? Something real instead of distance? Hardly Sacha’s style, even before I glimpsed the analytic mind that drives his every interaction.

Throwing back the blankets, I wash and find clean clothes in the chest at the end of the bed. More pants in the same soft material, a simple tunic, and boots.

Whatever abilities I’m developing, learning to control them is the priority. Everything else, including confusing kisses and mental connections, can wait.

The main chamber is empty when I enter, but there is clear evidence of Sacha’s presence. Open books, handwritten notes, and a small plate with bread and cheese.

The maps from yesterday have been replaced by a new one centered around what looks like a city. The drawing shows walls, buildings, and openings that I assume are entry points.

I study it while waiting, trying to figure out what the symbols and notes mean. Whatever the place is, it looks formidable, with multiple walls, limited entry points, and markings that might indicate guard posts.

“Ready? ”

I turn too fast.

Sacha is standing near the door. Gone are the formal clothes of last night, and he’s back to being dressed in dark clothing similar to those he wore in the tower, his blade secured at his hip.

My eyes jerk to his face and away again, but not before I see the perfectly blank expression. Distant. Formal. Exactly the way he chooses to be seen.

My stomach twists sharply.

“I guess so.” I’m glad to find my voice stays steady. If he’s going to pretend nothing happened, then so will I.

He nods, walking around the table. “Today, we focus on trying to understand your new abilities. We’ll start with trying an intentional manifestation, rather than an emotional response.”

All business then. Fine. I can work with that.

“Okay, how do we start?”

“ Where , not how .” He turns toward the door he came through. “Stonehaven contains areas specifically designed for magical training. Before the purges, they were used to help teach those with natural abilities. Come with me.”

And just like that, I fall into step behind him. Like a thread caught and pulled, whether I want it to be or not.