For a second, I was speechless, and I couldn’t do anything except shake my head back and forth. “No. There has to be another—”
“There’s no other way.” He dropped my wrists and pulled his arms over his head until the shackles were resting behind his neck. “If I’m going to die, I want to take him with me.”
My throat burned and tears rolled down my face. “We have an idea. Just give us a little more time.” I couldn’t risk telling him the details, not with Andras reading his thoughts.
Jared’s gaze trailed from the wet walls of the cell to the burns covering his chest and up to the Devil’s Trap on the ceiling. Finally, he looked at me, his face marked with pain I could see as easily as the scars. “I don’t know how much time I have left.”
I stared back at him, trying to make sense of the words. My stomach clenched and every part of me felt empty and numb. I took a shaky breath, tears blurring my eyes.
He moved closer, and I stepped back too fast.
“I’m sorry,” I said, realizing what I’d done.
He walked up to the bars, his movements slow and tentative. “I just wanted to—” His blue eyes were full of pain and confusion.
It’s Jared. He won’t hurt me.
If I was wrong, he could kill me.
As long as I don’t have to kill him.
I took a step closer, then another, until we were only a foot apart.
“I just wanted to say goodbye.” He reached through the bars, and I didn’t move. “There are so many things I wish I’d told you. The way I feel about you…”
My heart pounded. “Tell me now.”
He reached through the bars and wiped a tear from the corner of my eye with his thumb. I shut my eyes. I wanted him to know I trusted him, no matter how stupid or reckless it seemed.
Jared’s fingers curled in and touched my jaw, and he traced the path of my tears with his thumb.
My eyes flew open and I caught his wrist, pulling it away from my face. “Don’t. The sigil will burn you.”
His pulse thundered against my skin. “I’ve been burned before.”
“Not like this,” I said.
“I don’t care.”
“But I do,” I whispered.
Jared let his finger trail down my cheek until it reached my lips. I kept my eyes locked on his as the ash burned him. He never flinched. Then he pulled his fingers back inside the bars and held up his palm.
I raised my own, until our hands were only inches apart—a reflection in the broken mirror that had become our lives.
Our palms met against the iron, and he closed his hand around mine. “Every person has one thing that defines them. A truth they believe in above everything else. You are my truth.”
Elle was sitting on her bed with a book when I opened our door. She jumped and shoved the cloth-covered volume under her blanket.
“What are you reading?”
Elle didn’t respond right away, and a strange expression passed over her face. Then she slid the frayed volume out from underneath the blanket and held it up.
“Summoning Circles in Demonology: Doorways to Darkness. Where did you get that?” I asked.
She scrambled to the end of the bed and crossed her legs like we used to do at summer camp when we stayed up late, telling secrets. “Dimitri lent it to me. I wanted to learn more about paranormal entities.”
Paranormal entities?
“When did you start using ghost hunting terminology?” A few days ago, she thought EMF was an acronym for Electro-Magnified Ghost Finder.
She stiffened, which wasn’t like her. Elle never got uncomfortable; making other people feel that way was her specialty.
“Does this have anything to do with Lukas?”
Elle’s shoulders relaxed. “Maybe.”
“Maybe? That’s all I get?” Usually, Elle spilled every detail related to the guy she liked, and plenty about the ones she didn’t like.
She dropped the heavy book on the floor. “I’ve done enough reading for tonight, and you look tired. Do you think you can sleep?”
“I hope so.”
After I changed into sweats and crawled in bed, she turned off the lights. Part of me expected her to flip them back on and tell me everything. But she didn’t.
I replayed my visit with Jared, focusing on the happy moments.
His voice.
Touching his skin.
You are my truth.
Thoughts of him lulled me to sleep.
The chains are gone.
Jared is standing in front of me, shirtless in his frayed jeans. He’s soaking wet and barefoot. His coffee-colored hair is wet, too—messy and curling at his neck.
My eyes sweep over the scars on his chest and up to his face.
He smiles at me, and his pale blue eyes light up beneath long black eyelashes that would be wasted on any other guy.
He’s still in the cell, but the door is open, and I’m in here, too.
Together.
That’s all I can think.
“Come here,” he says.
I walk toward him, unable to speak.
The nightmare is finally over.
I can feel it in my bones—in my heart. It’s the way he’s looking at me, and the fact that the chains are gone.
When I’m close enough, he hooks a finger through the belt loop of my jeans and pulls me closer.
We’re a foot apart, and he holds me there. “I want to look at you.” He tucks my hair behind my ear, and the moment his fingers touch my skin, I shiver. “I never thought I’d be able to touch you again.”
My throat burns, and I don’t try to hold back my tears. I feel happy in a way I’ve never experienced before—safe and whole. “Me too.”
Jared slides his hand behind my neck and steps closer. Our lips are touching, but he hasn’t kissed me, yet. “I dreamed about this,” he whispers. “All those nights I spent locked in this cell. This is what I thought about.”
I push up on my toes because he is so much taller than me, holding his shoulders for balance. I kiss him, and he relaxes against me.
Everything is going to be okay now.
He pulls back and looks at me, cradling my face. “On the worst nights—when I slept on the floor because it hurt to move, from Gabriel’s whip digging into my flesh and holy water burning every inch of my body—I thought about this moment.”
Jared’s hands drift down to my neck, and his grip tightens. “And what it would feel like to be inside your skin.”
His blue eyes are lost in shadow, the black ink filling them until every trace of the boy I am falling in love with is gone.
Alara and Dimitri returned later that night.
“Anything?” I asked.
Alara shook her head slowly. Nothing more needed to be said. They hadn’t found the Shift. In a single moment, the scrap of hope I had been holding onto vanished.
29. UNCAGED
I waited until morning to sneak down and visit Jared again. I had to tell him the truth about the Shift—that it was the key to saving him, and we had no idea where to find it. If Andras knew what happened to it, maybe Jared knew, too. More evidence of their horrific mind meld was the last thing I wanted. But Jared was running out of time.
One of the bulbs had burned out at the end of the tunnel, leaving parts of the cell in shadow, along with Jared. Even in the darkness, he looked broken, and I felt myself breaking.
He doesn’t deserve this.
Iron bars were the only things separating us.
He didn’t look up from where he sat on the cell floor, leaning against the wall, in nothing but a pair of jeans. I glanced at the chains binding his wrists. With his head bowed, he looked exactly the same.
But he’s not.
I let my fingers curl around the wet metal bars. Several times a day, holy water rained from the sprinklers in the ceiling. I fought the urge to unlock the door and let him out.
“I told you not to come down here anymore.” He hadn’t moved, but I knew he didn’t need to
see me to sense my presence. “No one else will.”
He meant Lukas, Priest, and Alara.
“Everyone’s trying to figure this out. They don’t know what to do about—” The words caught in my throat.
“About me.” He rose from the floor, and walked toward me—and the bars separating us.
As he drew closer, I counted the links in the chain hanging between his wrists. Anything to keep from looking him in the eye. But instead of moving away, I gripped the bars tighter. He reached out and wrapped his hands around the metal above mine. Close but not touching.