Chapter Twelve: Midnight
1470 Words
She woke at midnight.
Not gradually — not the slow surfacing of someone moving through natural sleep toward morning. Suddenly. Like something had reached into wherever she was and pulled her back.
The room was dark.
Not entirely — the lamp on his side was on, turned low, the specific amber that meant he hadn't slept. She knew before she opened her eyes fully. Felt it — awake, present, the quality of him that existed when he'd been sitting with something for a long time and had gotten very still about it.
She opened her eyes.
He was exactly where she'd last seen him.
Beside her on the bed. Not under the covers — still dressed, still exactly as he'd been when she'd fallen asleep, like he hadn't moved in the hours between then and now. His back against the headboard. Her hand still in his.
Silver eyes on her the moment she moved.
Like he'd been watching. Like he'd been watching for a while.
"Hey," she said. Her voice was still thin. Better than the pavement. Better than two hours ago. But thin.
"Hey," he said quietly.
She looked at him.
At the lamp. At the dark outside the window. At the set of his jaw and the silver eyes that were doing something she couldn't fully name — warm and present and carrying underneath both of those things something that had weight to it. Something heavy that he was holding carefully.
"You haven't slept," she said.
"No," he said.
"Jace—"
"I'm fine," he said.
She looked at him for a moment.
Then she shifted — slowly, her body registering the protests of the evening but obeying anyway — until she was closer to him. Until her head found his shoulder and his arm came around her automatically the way it always did. The way it had learned to do. The way she thought it would probably always do regardless of anything.
He pressed his lips to the top of her head.
Held them there.
The bond ran between them — quieter than usual still, carrying the shadow of the pavement, but warm. Present. Both of them feeling each other feeling each other in the specific recursive way the bond sometimes worked in the dark.
"Jace," she said into his shoulder.
"Mm."
"I love you."
He exhaled.
Slow and long and carrying in it something she felt rather than heard.
"I love you," he said. Quiet. Certain. "So much, Elara. So much that—" He stopped. Started again. "There isn't a word for it in any language I've learned in a thousand years. I've looked."
She closed her eyes.
"Nothing can change that," he said. "Nothing that happens. Nothing the world does. Nothing." His arm tightened around her. "Do you understand me?"
"I understand you," she said softly.
A pause.
"Do you believe me," he said.
She thought about that.
About the pavement. About the months before it — the attacks, the pattern, the world pressing in from every direction. About the bond and the oath and the ring on her finger and all the things they'd built in this house in the months since January.
"I believe you," she said.
"Good."
She was quiet for a moment.
The lamp burned low.
The winter night pressed against the windows.
"Jace," she said.
"Mm."
"Something's going to split us up."
The arm around her didn't move. Didn't tighten. Didn't do anything that would tell her the sentence had landed differently than the ones before it.
But she felt it through the bond.
A flicker.
Brief. Contained. Gone almost before she registered it.
"What makes you say that," he said. Careful. Even.
"I don't know," she said. "I just — I feel it. Something coming. Something that's going to—" She stopped. "It's been too good, Jace. Even with the attacks and the war and all of it — us, here, this — it's been too good. And in my experience when things are this good the world finds a way to—"
"Stop," he said quietly.
She went still.
"That's not going to happen," he said.
"Jace—"
"It's not," he said. Firm. Steady. The specific voice of someone who had made a decision about what was true and was not revisiting it. "Whatever you're feeling — whatever instinct is telling you that tonight — it's wrong. You hear me?"
She lifted her head.
Looked at him.
At the silver eyes in the low lamplight — meeting hers directly, holding them, steady in the way that he was always steady even when the steadiness was doing a great deal of work underneath.
"It's not going to happen," he said again. Looking directly at her. "Not us. Not what we have. Nothing is splitting us up. Not the war. Not Malachar. Not Orion. Not anyone."
She held his gaze.
"Promise me," she said softly.
Something moved in his expression.
There and gone.
"I promise you," he said.
She looked at him for a long moment.
At the face she had memorised line by line without meaning to. At the silver eyes that were the most honest things she knew. At the jaw and the lamp and the dark outside and the bond running between them like a live wire in both directions.
She believed him.
God help her she believed him.
Because he was Jace and Jace didn't say things he didn't mean and his voice was steady and his eyes were on hers and he was holding her like she was the most important thing in any room she'd ever occupied.
She laid her head back on his shoulder.
"Okay," she said quietly.
"Okay," he said.
His hand came up to her hair.
Traced slow lines through the blue-black pixie cut with the specific gentleness of someone who had something to do with their hands and had chosen this.
"Go back to sleep," he said.
"You should sleep too," she said.
"I will," he said.
She knew he wouldn't.
She could feel it — the quality of him that was awake in a way that had nothing to do with the hour, that was running something deep and private that had no interest in sleep.
But she was tired.
And he was warm.
And the bond was steady.
And he had said it's not going to happen in that voice with those eyes and she had believed him.
She closed her eyes.
"Jace," she murmured.
"Still here," he said.
"Still here," she echoed softly.
Her breathing slowed.
The bond carried her under.
He sat in the dark long after she fell back asleep.
Her head on his shoulder.
Her hand in his.
The low lamp burning.
The winter night outside.
The bond warm and steady in his chest — her end of it deep and even and sleeping, completely unaware, carrying none of the weight of what was sitting in the kitchen or what morning was going to bring.
He had told her it wasn't going to happen.
He had looked her in the eyes and said nothing is splitting us up and I promise you and it's not going to happen at all.
He had meant every word.
He meant it now.
Because what was coming wasn't the world splitting them up.
It was him.
Choosing to step back.
Choosing to become the distance between them because the alternative was a pavement and a bond gone quiet and a vampire who had three centuries of surviving everything and was apparently not going to survive him.
The world wasn't splitting them up.
He was.
For her.
Because of her.
To keep her.
Nothing can change that, he had said.
He turned the words over.
Looked at them.
They were still true.
That was the thing — they were still completely, entirely true. What he felt hadn't changed. What she was to him hadn't changed. What he was about to do tomorrow hadn't changed a single atom of any of it.
He was going to step back and it was going to break something in both of them.
And he was going to love her through every second of it.
From a distance that was going to feel like dying.
Because she was sleeping on his shoulder.
Because the bond had gone quiet on a pavement today.
Because he had promised her once — I've got you. I've always got you — and this was what that looked like when the world made keeping it complicated.
He pressed his lips to her hair.
I love you, he thought toward the bond.
So much.
So much that tomorrow I'm going to do the thing you'll never forgive me for.
And I'll mean that too.
He sat in the dark.
He held her hand.
He didn't sleep.
- Writer
