Page 49 of Ghoul Me, Maybe
I don’t have to turn to know it’s him.
“I felt it,” Elias says softly. “You read something.”
I hold up the letter.
He kneels beside me, careful. Reverent.
“Jonas,” he says, looking down at the page. “Always ten steps ahead. And three off the map.”
I laugh, and it breaks in the middle. “He knew. Heknewwhat you were bound to.”
Elias doesn’t flinch.
“I figured. The dreams. The pull. The way the relic feels like it remembers more than I do.”
“He could’ve severed it,” I whisper. “But he didn’t.”
“Would you have?”
The answer sits heavy in my mouth.
“No,” I say finally. “But it wasn’t his choice to make.”
Elias closes his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Sienna.”
“For what?”
“For being what keeps you hunted. For being the anchor you can’t drop.”
I reach up.
Cup his face.
“You’re not the anchor,” I murmur. “You’re thereasonI haven’t sunk.”
He leans in, forehead touching mine. No ghosts. No magic. Just skin. Warm and trembling.
“I don’t know how this ends,” he says. “But I’m not letting the relic take you. Not again. Notever.”
I nod.
“Then let’s figure out how to destroy it.”
Together.
We sit in silence for a while after the storm of truth passes.
The lighthouse hums with old wind and history, the kind that gets into your teeth and won’t let go. Elias doesn’t speak. Doesn’t move. He just keeps his eyes on the letter, like it might shift under his gaze and give him different answers.
He says, “I thought he left me.”
I glance over.
He’s still, but something in his voice is unraveling.
“I thought when I died, Jonas locked me in that wreck to forget me. Toburyme. That it was easier to pretend I’d never mattered.”
