Page 73 of Ashen Souls

The walls peeled away like smoke in a gale.

I jolted back into my flesh, my eyes snapping open to the familiar ceiling. My body was humming with his touches, my heart pounding against my ribs.

But this time, I didn’t wake up.

I was already awake.

Already aware.

Beside me on the mattress lay a tangle of blood-red silk.

19

There was no slow climb out of sleep. I was thrown back into my own world, gasping in the dark of my bedroom. Every nerve in my body was still frayed, caught in the space between memory and sensation. Because lying beside me was that same sliced, blood-red gown.

Real.

I lifted my hands. Just seconds ago, they had been torn open, weeping blood down my forearms. Now, my wrists were unmarred. Unbroken. Yet beneath the skin, my entire being was screaming, vibrating with the phantom agony of ropes grinding into bone.

Daeren wasn’t a shadow. He wasn’t just a trick of my mind. He existed. Somewhere out there, he was just as solid as I was.

I turned onto my side, clutching the blanket against my body. The sigil felt warm, throbbing, as if it knew I was thinking about it.

About him.

Why me?

Why the identical symbol, mirrored on my flesh?

What did he want? Why did it feel like whatever tethered us together had been waiting long before I ever knew his name?

I searched my memory for something: an omen, an old story, a warning I might have missed, but found only blank spaces.

I didn't want more riddles or mind games. If I was going to figure out what was happening to me, I needed facts, I needed history. And right now, the boring reality of the Old City Archives was exactly what I needed to prove I hadn't completely lost my mind.

But I couldn’t do it alone. The amount of material rotting behind those walls would bury me. Records. Ledgers. Forgotten names. Centuries of things no one had bothered to translate into something searchable or sane.

I needed help.

Which meant Harper.

I glanced at the time on my phone.

5:07 a.m.

She’d closed the bistro last night. She was currently dead to the world, probably still smelling faintly of fry grease and exhaustion. Calling her now meant risking my life.

But not calling her meant something worse.

If she found out later that I’d discovered a literal demon and hadn’t told her immediately, she would murder me. Slowly. With commentary.

I dialed.

It rang twice before Harper picked up, her voice a groggy, hostile rasp.

“Okay, either someone is bleeding or you finally slept with someone interesting. Which is it?”

“You need to come over,” I said. “Now.”