For a second, I honestly forget how to breathe.
Will's words still hang between us, heavy as storm clouds.
They'll come for you now.
The hollow feels too small, too close—like the tree itself is leaning in to listen. My heart pounds so hard it feels like it's trying to climb out of my throat and abandon ship without the rest of me.
Daylight isn't supposed to get into dreams.
That thought keeps looping, louder than everything else.
Will watches me like he's waiting for something to break—and terrified he'll be the reason it does. Not moving. Not pushing. Just… there. Steady. Bracing.
"I had a nightmare," he says quietly. "Months ago. I watched them take you. I thought it was only a dream. My worst fear on repeat—ending up in a world without you."
My fingers curl into fists.
Because I had that nightmare too.
The one I never told anyone. Not Mom. Not my sisters. Not even Shelby—and I tell Shelby everything. The accident. The shadows. The thing that dragged me through glass and into nothing.
"I…" My voice comes out rough. "I never told anyone about mine."
His eyes soften like he already knew. Which somehow makes me feel both seen and sick.
"I was chained in my father's dungeon when it happened," he continues, voice turning harsher, dragged over stone. "He thought pain would make me 'remember who I am.' Cold rock. Blood in the cracks. Rust and salt in the air."
He swallows. I can see his throat work.
"I pulled until my wrists split open," he says. "Not because of what he was doing. Because I felt you being taken—and I couldn't get to you."
The air between us goes thin. My body fills in missing pieces like it remembers the room.
"And that thing in the shadows," he adds, jaw locking, "that carried you away…"
I force myself to breathe. "That was real?"
"It was a Ker," he says.
The word drops into my stomach like a stone.
"Okay, no." I lift a hand like I'm calling timeout. "You keep saying that like I'm supposed to know what it means. What is a Ker? And why do they want me?"
He goes still, like I've asked him to drag something out of the dark and hold it under lantern light.
"You really don't know," he murmurs.
My laugh is brittle. "If I knew, I wouldn't be asking while we're here at my childhood tree."
"They're not gods," Will says finally. "Not mortals. Not spirits. They're what happens when endings don't go clean."
My skin prickles.
"The Fates cut threads," he continues. "Some endings are merciful. Some are earned. But wars, plagues, massacres—ugly deaths—warp the weave. All that fear and rage has to go somewhere."
His voice drops.
"The Keres are where it went."
A chill crawls down my spine, slow and deliberate.
"They gather where screams used to be," he says. "Old killing fields. Plague pits. Places people died afraid and no one said their names. They feed on what's left behind."
My stomach rolls. "You're saying they eat… death?"
He shakes his head once. "Death is clean. They eat the part that refuses to lie still."
Images flicker—shadow-mouths drinking smoke, hands with too many fingers plucking threads out of bodies.
"How do you even see them?" I ask, voice thin.
"You don't," he says. "Not unless you're meant to." His gaze slides past me into the dark beyond the hollow. "To most people, they're just accidents. A wrong step. A turn you swear you didn't make."
He hesitates, like naming them gives them teeth.
"They look like something that got halfway to being human and changed its mind," he says. "Bones wrong. Mouth too wide, like it was carved in after."
My throat goes dry.
"And their eyes…"
He stops.
"What about their eyes?" I whisper.
"No pupils," he says. "Just holes. Bottomless. Like tunnels punched through them into every nightmare anyone ever had."
The lantern flame shivers.
"They smell like copper and ash," he adds. "Old wounds. Burned offerings. You hear them before you see them—metal scraping inside walls that don't exist. Wings made of bone and torn cloth."
His jaw tightens hard.
"They don't walk when they can drag themselves."
I flinch. Because my body remembers that sound even if my mind doesn't.
"And they want me because…?" I manage.
"The Keres are drawn to endings," Will says. "They hoard them. Trade them. But there's one ending they've never been allowed to have."
My pulse stutters.
"Yours."
A sick heat crawls up my neck. "Why mine?"
"Because you're a fracture," he says, plain as a verdict. "When patterns break, you appear. When something that should have ended refuses to stay buried, your thread is woven through it."
He searches for the right word and finds something worse than fear.
"To them, you're a theif."
I blink. "I'm what?"
"You steal endings," he says. Flat with certainty. Memorized. "You undo what shouldn't be undone. You free what's meant to stay chained. You protect lives that were supposed to be cut short."
He doesn't say it like praise.
He says it like history.
"You've slipped them every time," he continues. "They get close. You vanish. You die and don't die. They taste you in the air and never get to feed."
My stomach turns.
"And every time one of them fails," he adds, "their leader makes an example out of them."
My skin goes cold. "Their leader."
"Kerahan," he says quietly. "Oldest. Wears a crown of ribs from the first battlefield she fed on. She doesn't forget."
"And I'm on her list."
"You are the list," he says.
The hollow seems to shrink. The bark at my back feels too close.
"I saw what happened in that vision," Will says, softer now. "When Kerahan finally got her claws on you properly. She and the others dragged you through glass and stone and air." His voice goes rough. "They cut you with every life you stole from them."
My knees threaten to give. I brace a hand on the tree.
"They want you dead," he says. "Not as food. As revenge."
"Perfect," I breathe. "So I'm their white whale."
Will's mouth twitches, humorless. "Whales didn't tear men out of their bodies and wear them as coats."
"Great," I whisper. "Love that for me."
"Aeth—Angela." He steps closer, warmth pushing back a fraction of the cold. "They're older than your nightmares. But they're not stronger than what you are."
"Yeah, about that." Panic spikes. "The whole 'greatest goddess ever born' thing? I can't even light a candle without a match. I'm not prepared to fight death-eating trauma goblins with bone crowns."
"You're not alone this time," he says.
I want to argue. To say I've always been alone. That's the point.
But then he looks at me—really looks—and the next words come out like confession.
"That nightmare wasn't just yours," he says. "I felt it. The moment they dragged you through, I felt your soul rip sideways."
The air hums. Vibrating.
"And that thing in the shadows—" he starts.
"With the blank eyes," I finish hoarsely. "I remember."
His gaze snaps to mine, stunned—like I just walked into a room he's been trapped in for a century.
"You feel it," he whispers. "That pull in your ribs. That ache when nothing makes sense but you can't shake it."
He doesn't blink.
"That's us," he says. "That's the bond. They buried your memories. They couldn't kill what we are."
Something in me flinches at the old name.
"Stop calling me that," I mutter. "It's Angela. Or Ang. That other name isn't mine. The rest of it is just… myth."
He doesn't argue.
"You feel it when I bleed," he says instead.
My stomach knots because the truth is immediate—those random electric bolts of wrongness lately. Panic with no trigger. Sharp enough to leave me shaking in a grocery aisle.
He sees it land.
"This wasn't how it was supposed to be," he says quietly. "We were meant to be simple. Guard and charge. Soldier and Fate. Your father chose me because he thought I'd never love anyone to become a problem."
A humorless almost-smile.
"I swore I'd never belong to one person."
His voice cracks.
"Until you."
It should sound like a line. It doesn't. It sounds like someone handing over the last piece of themselves.
"You burned through everything," he says. "All my plans. Every vow. You argued with gods. You fought the threads themselves." His eyes shine with old hurt. "You destroyed me, and I never wanted to be saved."
My eyes sting.
This isn't my life. This isn't my story. I'm standing here in worn jeans and my not-so-ninja black hoodie. I have work in the morning and a masquerade ball dress hanging in my closet.
And yet my chest hurts like my soul remembers all of it.
I open my mouth to tell him exactly how insane this sounds—
And something slams into my head.
You must give me permission to marry her, Hermes. The union will strengthen—
The voice booms so suddenly I sway. The hollow blurs. Gold. Marble. The weight of fur thrown over a throne arm.
Ares' voice—sharp, demanding. Another voice—smooth, wry: Hermes. And then something deeper, thunder in a body:
Don't test me, brother. She will choose her own companion.
I see my hands. Pale fingers around the spine of a book. I look up and there is a man on a gold throne with storm eyes, and a woman's voice—my voice—laughing, then going flat.
No, Father. I would never be with a man like that.
I jerk, breath sawing in, and the forest slams back into place. Lantern light. Moss. Bark under my palm.
Will is mid-sentence, like nothing happened.
"…and my mother—gods, she wouldn't stop bringing you up to her friends…"
I stare at him, chest heaving.
"You didn't… see that?" I whisper.
His smile fades. "See what?"
"A thorn," I whisper. Figures around it. Power so heavy it pressed the air flat." My voice cracks. "Me. I was just there."
Will goes utterly still.
Slowly—like he's approaching something wild—he lifts a hand and tucks a loose piece of hair behind my ear. His fingers are warm. Steady. Real.
"That's your memory," he murmurs. "Breaking through."
I let out a laugh that sounds dragged over glass. "No. That's me being suggestible. You plant stories, my brain plays along. Trauma and stress and—"
"And truth," he cuts in softly. "Sometimes, truth."
"Do you hear yourself?" I snap, because anger is easier than panic. "We met tonight. Tonight. I had wings—"
"So did I," he says, gentle and brutal.
The memory of my mouth on his under the tree lights every nerve in my body.
"You think this is easy for me?" he asks. "I've been walking around with yesterday stuck in my chest for a hundred years. For me, tonight is yesterday."
His voice drops.
"You woke up. I never went back to sleep."
It hits so hard I forget to inhale.
"I didn't ask for that," I whisper. "If any of this is true, I didn't ask you to search for me. I didn't ask to be the reason you bled."
His jaw clenches. "I know."
"And you keep talking like it's a love story," I say, voice shaking, "but for me it's like waking up and someone handing me a diary I don't remember writing."
Silence hums between us.
"No," he says immediately. "Angela. I don't expect you to slip back into anything."
He takes a step back—and the sudden absence of his heat makes me shiver. For the first time since I met him, he looks lost.
"I expect you to be furious," he admits. "Terrified. To tell me to stay away." He swallows hard. "You have every right."
His voice roughens.
"I'm just selfish enough to hope you won't."
The flashlight shudders. The hollow holds its breath.
I stare at my hand. At the phantom outline of a mark that might be magic or madness. At the ache in my wrists when he talked about chains. At the way my ribs tightened when he said too late.
"I don't know if I believe you," I say finally. "I don't know if I can. It's too much."
He nods once, like he expected that.
"But," I add, hating that my voice shakes, "I know I feel you."
His gaze snaps to mine.
"I feel it," I whisper. "When you touch me. When you look at me like that. When you said dungeon, my wrists hurt. When you said Ker, I knew what shadow you meant before you described it."
I swallow hard.
"And when you kissed me…it didn't feel like a first."
The words taste like confession.
"It felt like picking up a sentence we stopped mid-word."
For a moment he doesn't move.
Then, very slowly—like he's afraid I'll bolt—he lifts his hand and offers it.
No pressure. No command.
Just an open palm between us.
"Yesterday is mine," he says quietly. "Today is yours. I won't take that from you."
His eyes are blue and endless and so, so tired.
"But if you ever want the pieces back," he adds, "I'll be here. As long as it takes."
My hand trembles as I look past him—past the flashlight glow—into the dark beyond the hollow, where something hungry might already be watching.
I could walk away. Crawl back through my window. Pretend this was a very detailed stress dream.
But yesterday is still echoing in my skull. Marble and myrtle. A black crown. A man kneeling in the dark and me whispering:
What took you so long?
And for better or worse, the girl in that memory has my eyes.
I slip my hand into his.
It fits too easily.
"This doesn't mean I trust you," I warn.
A small, broken smile touches his mouth. "I know."
"It doesn't mean I remember." My voice thickens. "Or that I'm yours. Or that I'll ever be who you keep calling me."
"I know," he repeats, softer. His fingers curl around mine, careful—like he's holding something that could shatter and cut him open.
"It just means," I say, staring at our joined hands, "that I'm not running. Yet."
Relief flickers across his face. Not cocky. Not smug. Just… real.
"Yesterday, always," he murmurs, more to himself than to me.
I don't say it back.
Not yet.
The wind shifts—cold and sudden. The shadows beyond the light glow ripple, not with movement, but with recognition.
Like the dark knows me now.
And I can't shake the feeling that deep under my fear and anger and confusion—
a part of me already does, too.