Page 48

COLE STEADIED HER, one hand on her back, the other guiding her shoulder as she rose from the Box. She was shivering, soaked through, clutching the bundled duskwyrm to her chest.

“I’ve got you,” he murmured. “Easy.”

Willow stepped out of the Box and into Cole’s bedroom. Willow’s eyebrows flew up.

“Your room?” she managed. “All this time, you’ve kept the Box in your room? It’s nearly as big as your bed!”

Cole shrugged sheepishly.

“What did you do—step over it every time you had to get a clean shirt? Or just leap from the door straight into bed like a gymnast?”

“There was a system,” he said. “I managed.”

She felt the twitch of a grin. “Okay. Sure.”

Cole’s eyes found hers. “If you’re entrusted with a treasure, you guard it well.”

The sweetness of his words, and the gravity with which he said them, almost undid her. She opened her mouth to reply, but the duskwyrm stirred, giving a low hiss.

Cole jolted backward.

“Whoa! What the hell?”

Willow clutched the bundle tighter. “He’s a darling. Don’t be scared,” she said quickly. “He saved my life.”

She peeled back the folds of wet denim. Warily, Cole leaned in.

The duskwyrm stirred. Its scales had begun to shine again, a clear sapphire blue with threads of opal glinting faintly.

“Is that what I think it is?” Cole asked. “It is, isn’t it?”

“I had to,” she said.

Cole’s gaze flicked to the duskwyrm, then back to Willow. Understanding settled over his features, slow and heavy.

“Oh. You brought it for—”

“Shh.” Willow pressed two fingers to his lips. “Later.”

Heat sparked, as real as if she’d lit a match and pressed it between them. Reluctantly, she dropped her hand.

Cole crossed to a shelf and retrieved an empty ceramic vase. He took the duskwyrm from Willow, his thumb and forefinger sandwiching its jaw, his palm cupping its weight like he’d handled far worse.

“Be careful,” Willow said as he lowered the wyrm into the vase.

The duskwyrm gave a single unhappy flick of its tail but didn’t resist.

Willow knelt, peering in. “You’re okay, little guy.”

Cole slid a book on top of the vase’s opening.

“Will he be able to breathe?” Willow asked.

Cole pushed the book half a millimeter to the right, creating a thin gap. “Yes, Willow. Your snake friend will be able to breathe.”

“Oh. Good,” Willow said, though the room was going tilty. The strength went out of her legs, and Cole was beside her in an instant, catching her and holding her safe.

“Willow?”

“I’m fine,” she said. Her teeth began to chatter. “Just... cold.”

Cole’s eyes swept over her, taking in her drenched jeans and blouse and the way her hair stuck to her cheeks in soaked, tangled ropes. “Willow,” he said carefully, “why are you wet?”

The pond. The sinking baby. Severine’s disappointment and her cold, cold eyes. And Serrin, his eyes full of someone else.

“Serrin,” she murmured.

Cole stilled. “What happened? Did something happen?”

Willow wanted to tell him everything, and she would, but the room was blinking in and out of focus. “He didn’t... I didn’t... and Jace!” She didn’t want to cry. She was too tired to cry. The tears came anyway.

“Come on,” Cole said gently. He guided her to his bed, where the covers were already pulled back. He must have been sleeping when she’d arrived—when she’d crashed through the Box and upended everything.

She sank gratefully down. The sheets were warm and smelled like soap and sunlight and a trace of clean sweat.

Cole tugged at her clammy blouse, and Willow let him. Her body trembled uncontrollably with deep, bone-sunk cold. The cotton peeled away from her skin, and Cole placed it aside. Then he tugged off her jeans. Not once did his touch stray. Not once did his gaze waver from what was appropriate.

He pulled one of his T-shirts over her head and tugged it down around her. He steered her until she was lying down, shivering, her eyes fluttering closed even as her limbs resisted rest. Cold clung to her like a second skin. She curled up on her side and thought of Maeve. Jace.

“I’m so tired,” she said, the words hitching. She felt like a little girl on the verge of tears. She was a little girl on the verge of tears. She just happened to be in a nineteen-year-old body.

Or was she twenty now?

How long had she been in Eryth?

“I want to sleep. I want to be warm. I want—” She shook her head. “I don’t know what I want, but Cole, I’m s-so cold!”

Cole exhaled, and the mattress dipped as he climbed in beside her, joining her beneath the sheets. His warmth enveloped her, one arm hooked around her ribs, his breath steady at her neck.

He addressed her as gently as she’d addressed the duskwyrm, saying, “Shh. You’re okay. You’re home now.”

~

Willow woke slowly.

Her body felt heavy in the most delicious way, as though gravity had wrapped her in cotton and pinned her to the earth. Her muscles were no longer coiled in panic or clenched against cold. She was warm—truly warm—and for a moment she just breathed it in.

She smelled soap and sunlight and, again, a trace of something muskier.

Her eyes flew open. She was curled against Cole’s chest. Her bare thigh—oh, God—was slung over one of his. She was wearing one of his T-shirts, way too big and cozy. Only, she had no memory of putting it on.

Cole stirred. His eyes blinked open. He smiled at her, full and unguarded. “Hey, there,” he said.

Her expression must’ve broadcast her confusion because he blinked again, this time with alarm.

“No, no,” he said, propping himself up and showing her his palm. “You were soaked and shaking. I just—” He cut himself off. “You needed warmth, so I warmed you, but that’s all. Nothing happened, Willow. I swear.”

Willow took in the worry knotting his brow. He’d been careful with her from the beginning. Mocking, teasing, yes—but never cruel. Always measured. Always, at the last second, reining himself in. A gentleman, through and through.

That night in World’s End, though. Their last night together.

She remembered how he’d looked at her in the moonlight, his eyes burning with a hunger he hadn’t been able to hide.

She remembered the way he’d pulled her to him like he had no choice, like he’d been starving and she was the only thing that could keep him alive.

Their kiss, for that moment, had stopped time.

And then she’d pulled away. From him. From that moment. From everything real and warm and rooted in the normal world.

She’d run to Serrin instead.

She still felt quietly fond of Serrin. Protective, even, which was strange.

She didn’t miss him or long for him. His betrayal when he’d seen Lily in the scrying basin instead of her...

It no longer stung. In fact, it no longer felt like betrayal at all.

What had she and Serrin shared, really?

Not passion but something pure, the kind of love that belonged in a cathedral: high and golden and revered. She’d loved her faerie prince like a prince in... well... a fairy tale. The Disney kind of fairy tale.

It hadn’t really been love, had it? How could it have been? She’d never even known him.

But she knew Cole, and Cole—for the love of thrice-spun foglace—was no Disney prince.

“Willow?” he said. His eyes scanned her face, like he was afraid she might break. “What’s going on in that head of yours, princess?”

Willow smiled and let her chaotic tangle of regrets, betrayals, and broken dreams fly off on dragon’s wings. They’d circle back soon enough. Right now, Willow had other things on her mind.

She leaned in and pressed her lips to his, which were full and soft.

He tensed but didn’t pull away. Then his fingers threaded through her hair, his palm curving to the back of her neck as he drew her closer.

He shifted his position and hers so that she found herself on her back with Cole half over her. She reached for him greedily, enthralled by the warmth and strength of his mortal flesh.

His hand found her hip, her waist, and then the soft skin below her ribs. Willow arched toward him with zero hesitation—not the little lost girl from the night before. Not a little girl. Not a confused teenager—or a broken one, either.

Willow was just Willow, wanting what she wanted. Cole’s body curved toward hers, and she clutched his hips, digging her fingers into his skin.

Cole drew back and looked down at her. His eyes were glazed with the hunger she remembered, but he lifted his eyebrows. Yes? No?

She answered without words, her fingers moving to the waistband of his pajama pants. She pushed them down as far as she could, then pulled his borrowed T-shirt over her head. All she wanted was skin against skin, heat meeting heat, the press and pull of breath and need.

Cole freed himself of his pajama pants with more haste than grace, and then he was kissing her again, and everything was urgent and real.

No fairy-tale shimmer, no illusion. Just the thrum of blood and the taste of salt and the whisper of her name on his lips.

When release came, it rode on a warm tide, sweeping them under like a wave returning to shore. No pond, no Box, no before or after.

Only this.

Only them.

At last.

~

Afterward, Willow lay nestled against Cole, her head on his chest.

Cole’s fingers traced gentle circles along her back. “So,” he murmured. “Eryth is real.”

Willow sighed, wishing they didn’t have to talk about it. But they did. “Yes,” she said.

He kissed the top of her head. “And here I thought Lost Souls held all the magic.”

She laughed. “Lost Souls has its own enchantments.”

Willow wished they could stay like this—warm, tangled, unbothered. But her mind flicked, unwillingly, to the duskwyrm. It was still here, still real, curled in its ceramic prison. Contained but not forgotten.

“I missed you,” Cole said.

“I missed you, too,” she replied.