Darien
I stared at my phone for a long time after the call ended.
The hotel room was quiet. The vending machine hummed through the wall. Cain’s snoring had stopped, which meant he’d heard me talking and was awake, giving me the courtesy of silence while I processed what I’d just been told.
A virus that was parasitic. Feeding on her magic. Weeks, maybe a month, before it got serious.
She’d told me not to come. Made me promise to finish the visits. And I had promised, because in that moment her voice had been steady enough to convince me that steady was the same as safe.
It wasn’t.
I closed my eyes and pushed out through the bond. Reached for the thread that connected us across the distance, that thin golden line stretched taut between my ribs and hers. I’d been feeling the strangeness
