Page 37 of Palingenesis

Red strands frame his face, the sunlight beaming down on him in a way that makes him glisten. His whole presence seems… ethereal.

It’s the clearest my head has felt all day.

“Who the fuck are you?” I growl, barely covering the wistfulness hidden beneath at being this close to him.

Those stunning eyes drop to my lips as I speak, a tilt to his own, before flicking to the side of my face.

The wire curling around my ear burns hot under his stare.

“Pity,” he tsks and I scoff.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

His eyes darken and he cocks his head. “You ask the wrong questions.”

Narrowing my gaze, I take a step closer—though there’s some part of me, some deep-down piece that’s screaming to run the opposite way—unable to resist the pull of intrigue, and maybe something even more dangerous lurking beneath. “What should I be asking?”

His smug grin twitches, flashing just enough teeth to be attractively creepy, and he lifts those black-smudged fingers, tips of two scraping down the stumble lining my jaw. I can’t help but shiver at the contact before I register the feel of him and slap his hand away.

“Don’t touch me,” I growl. “In fact, don’t come near me again. I don’t know what fucked timeline I landed in but leave me be.”

I take a full step back, our gazes locked, that invisible tether pulling tight in protest. Fighting it, I take another stride away. It’s so strong that I almost wave my hands in front of me, the physical act of dissolving any connection to this… whatever he is–more appealing by the second.

I finally have the version of Henry I always wanted. The one I needed.

The thought has me swallowing hard and turning away, severing the trance I was in, and everything rushes me at once. The noise of cars driving down the street, the bustle of bodies moving from one shop to the next, the chirp of insects and birds singing to the midday sun. Its bright and so much.

I even hear my name called over the noise of it all.

And yet, that ever-present dullness remains, a low hum that never really goes away, even when I’m wearing my hearing devices.

“You’re just making all the friends, aren’t you?” The smile on Henry’s face almost has me bracing for the inevitable comment I’m used to following an observation like that, but it never comes. His smile is soft and genuine when I stop in front of him, his eyes kind and sparkling.

It makes my chest ache.

“Yeah, uh, no. I just thought I recognized him.”

“He’s not a reader, is he?” Henry loops his arm around mine and starts walking, pulling me along without any indication that he feels the same resistance I do. “That would be cool.”

It takes what feels like an eternity for his words to sink in, and it’s not until we’re in front of the truck that it hits me and I freeze halfway into the cab. “What?”

Henry grins at me from across the bucket seat, nimble fingers clicking his seatbelt in place. “Seeing a reader in the wild has always been a dream of yours. It would be cool if we made it all the way here and it finally happened–like a sign or something.”

My throat bobs and my fingers start to shake. “Uh, yeah. Right.”

Jabbing the key into the ignition feels like turning on more than just my truck, my skin tightening and tingling with awareness.

I look up in time to catch Avery’s gaze through the window, his frown deeper than I’ve ever seen, and I pull away from the curb with a subtle shake to my head and a rock settling in my gut.

The entire drive back to the house leaves me in knots.

Something is very, very wrong.

But it’s not until I unlock the door to my—our—house that I realize how wrong things might be.

A single feather rests on the floor, the edges of it singed, and those rocks in my gut multiply so fast it makes me nauseous.

I’m losing it. Fucking losing it.