Chapter 3 · The Pale Stranger & The Ember (2)

"It's okay. It's okay. I've got you. I've got you. I'm sorry — I'm so sorry — I was trying to protect you from this, I was trying to give you more time —"

"Time for what?" My voice came out tiny. Broken. "Kael. What are you? What was that? What did I — what did I do to the cups?"

He was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, very gently:

"Come home with me. Let me explain. I'll tell you everything — everything I know, everything I remember, everything I've been hiding from you — but not here. Not with that —" He glanced at the pile of gray. "— that in the room. Please."

I should have run. Every sane instinct I had was screaming at me to run — the cold thing in my chest had gone quiet again, but it was quiet the way a cornered animal is quiet, coiled and watching. I had just watched a man — a thing — die in front of me. I had shattered fifty cups with my mind. I had a stranger in my apartment who knew my name and broke necks and had eyes like furnaces.

Every sane instinct said run.

Instead I took his hand.

His fingers closed around mine — careful, so careful, like I was something precious — and he led me out of the ruined café, past Mia's open-mouthed silence, past Mr. Ashworth's unreadable face, out into the gray Harrowgate evening, where the rain had started again, soft and endless, like the city was trying to wash the whole night away.

We went to my apartment. My apartment, not his — I wasn't ready for his. We went up the creaking stairs, past Mrs. Kowalski's door, and I sat on my couch and stared at my hands while he made me tea — tea, because the world was ending, apparently, and tea was the appropriate response.

He sat across from me. The coffee table between us like a truce line.

"Ask," he said quietly.

I had a thousand questions. I asked the one I couldn't stop circling: "Are you human?"

"No."

The word landed like a stone. I'd known. I'd known since the alley, since the wound that closed itself, since the eyes. But hearing it — hearing him say it, simple and final, like it was the most natural thing in the world — was different.

"Then what are you?"

He was quiet for a long moment. The rain filled the silence, soft and gray. Then he said:

"A wolf. Among other things. The wolf is — the honest part. The part that hunts, and protects, and —" He met my eyes. "— claims."

"Claims what?"

"Whatever it decides is its."

I swallowed. "And what has it decided?"

He didn't answer. He just looked at me, and the gold was back in his eyes, banked and burning, and I understood — I understood without him saying it — and the cold thing in my chest flickered, warm, and I hated it, I hated it so much, because I was afraid of him, I was afraid of everything, and I wanted to run, and I couldn't, and I didn't want to.

"You knew me," I said instead. "In the alley. You said — you said you remembered my eyes."

"Yes."

"How? I've never seen you before. I've never — I'm nobody. I'm a barista. I'm a girl with student debt and a philosophy degree and a cold thing in my chest that I've had since I was six —"

"You're not nobody." His voice was rough. "You're the most important person — the most important <em>thing</em> — in either world. And you don't remember, and I can't tell you yet, because if I tell you before you're ready, it will break you."

"Try me."

"Lynn —"

"TRY ME." I stood up. I was shaking, and I didn't care. "I just shattered every cup in my café. I watched a man turn into a spider and die. I've had a stranger living on my couch for a week, and every second I've known something was wrong, something was WRONG, and you've been lying to me, and I want — I NEED — to know who I am."

He stood too. Slowly. Like he was approaching a wounded animal.

"You're a Keeper," he said. "The last one. The last of a line that has held the world together for ten thousand years. And you're not human — you've never been human — you just forgot. You forgot so deeply and so completely that you became one."

The words washed over me. They should have meant nothing. They should have been the ravings of a madman — a gorgeous, terrifying madman with furnace eyes and a talent for violence.

But the cold thing in my chest — the stone that has sat there for sixteen years — stirred, and stretched, and for the first time since I could remember, it did not feel like a weight.

It felt like a heart.

"I don't believe you," I whispered.

"I know." His voice was gentle. "You will. But not tonight. Tonight, I'm going to make sure you're safe, and then I'm going to go clean up the mess I made, and then —" He stopped. "Then I'm going to tell you everything. Everything I know about who you are, and who I am, and why I've been looking for you for a hundred years."

"A hundred years."

"Yes."

"You've been looking for me for a hundred years."

"Yes."

I laughed — a broken, terrible sound. "I'm twenty-two. You've been looking for me since before I was born."

"I know what you are," he said simply. "I've known since the moment the Shroud — since the moment the world cracked. I knew you'd come. I've been — waiting."

The word hung in the air between us, heavy and strange. <em>Waiting.</em> A hundred years of waiting. For me.

"Why?" I asked, and my voice came out smaller than I wanted. "Why would you wait a hundred years for someone you've never met?"

He stepped forward. One step. Then another. He was close enough now that I could smell him — rain and cedar and something dark, something old, like the inside of a stone cathedral. He reached out, very slowly, and touched my face — my cheek, the line of my jaw, the pulse at my throat, like he was memorizing me.