Page 58 of Ghoul Me, Maybe
“No,” I whisper, clinging to him. “Don’t apologize. Fight.”
But there’s nothing left to fight.
And the sea takes him.
CHAPTER 21
ELIAS
Idon’t remember hitting the sand.
I just rememberfalling.
Not through air.
Througheverything.
Light bends around me. Sound forgets how to exist. My thoughts scatter like ashes in wind I can’t feel. The relic’s gone. The tether’s cut. And I’m slipping fast.
But something holds.
Not tightly. Not kindly.
More like fingers in the dark, digging in,refusingto let go.
A voice pulls me back.
Not hers.
Older. Rougher.
Lyle.
“—he’s not completely gone,” he says. “His signature’s tangled up in hers. We still have a shot.”
Mira answers, sharp. “We don’thavetime. If the binding cracks completely?—”
“It won’t,” he cuts in. “I’m not letting it.”
I want to speak.
But my mouth’s smoke.
When I come back, I’m on Mira’s floor. Salt lines every corner of the room. Candles burn low, wax dripping in perfect, deliberate circles. There’s a chalk pattern around me—a tight labyrinth of fae runes and elder glyphs. Some pulse like living things.
Mira kneels beside me, her face drawn, shadows under her eyes. Her hands hover inches from my chest, palms shaking.
“Sienna?” I rasp.
“Still breathing,” she says. “Barely slept since the wreck. She’s upstairs. You—” Her voice catches. “You weren’t.”
I sit up slowly.
Wrong move.
The room tilts, bends inward. My limbs pass through the air like they’re wading through molasses.
“What... is this?”
