Page 170 of Shifting Hearts 1
“I didn’t mean to.” My voice was rough. “But the Wyrd did.”
She turned slowly. The light of the dying sun caught on the bones beneath her feet, making her look carved from the same stuff — some half-witch, half-fey goddess in a forgotten shrine.
I should have walked away, but instead I stepped closer.
She didn’t move. “You came to threaten me again?”
“No.”
A pause, and then she asked. “Why are you here?”
I hesitated, for a moment before I uttered the truth. “Because I had to see if you were real.”
That made her flinch. Just a little.
“I am.” Her voice was quieter now. “I didn’t summon you. I dreamed you, yes. And maybe I pulled something through, but not like this.”
“You keep saying it’s too soon.”
“Itis,” she said, panic rising. “I’m not ready, and neither are you.”
A rustle of leaves. A shift in the Wyrd around us.
When I looked up again, she was only feet away. The pull between us was stronger out here — more raw without the wards.
“You said you saw me kill you,” she whispered.
I nodded.
“I’ve seen it too.”
We stood there for a long moment — toe to toe, fate crackling between us like lightning.
I reached out again. I couldn’t help it, and this time, she didn’t stop me as my fingers brushed her collarbone. Her skin was cold where mine burned with heat.
She gasped, and so did I.
It wasn’t a vision this time. It wasmemory. From before either of us had names. Past lives. Other bodies. Other deaths. Over and over again.
Always her.
Always me.
Always ending in blood.
I yanked my hand back, and she staggered like I’d hit her.
“Fuck,” I breathed.
THREE
Eris
Ifound him again at dusk.
The bone field stretched behind me like a graveyard of forgotten kings, but Brannon Grey stood in the clearing ahead of me like a storm that refused to break. His shoulders drawn taut, eyes cast to the sky, as if daring the stars to answer.
I should have left him there, should have turned my face to the night and let the tether fray, let time and distance do what logic could not. But I was not ruled by logic. I was my mother’s daughter—bone witch, sculptor of sorrow—and my father’s child, born of shadow and silence. When fate called, I listened.
