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I wasn’t sure who I was thanking, but I couldn’t stop thinking it. Not as he set me down and looked me over like I was some sort of miracle, but it was him. He’d crossed the veil, pushed through the other side, and come back to me just like he promised.

I touched his face, mapping the faint scruff along his jaw that I’d never seen before. I traced his mouth, lips cold under my touch. His breath fanned across my hand as I traced his nose, the slope of his cheekbones. His brow. Real. Just as real as I was.

“I thought maybe—”

He shook his head, gathering me close. “It doesn’t matter how far we are, Avery. I will find you. In every life, in every world, my soul will follow yours through the stars.”

And then he dipped his head, lifted my chin with the brush of his index finger, and brought his mouth to mine.

Chapter 29

Wolfe

He’d forgotten what it was like.

To feel the cold, sea-swept air bite through his clothes and tangle itself in his hair.

To feel the brush of his shirt against his chest, the soft blades of grass by his hips.

There was a time he knew this field with his eyes shut. He knew every bump, every divot and groove. Every rolling hill or uneven incline. He’d mapped it, committed it to himself.

He was relearning it again, shifting his weight in the damp mud and grass.

He’d forgotten, above all, what it was to have a heart. To feel the furious pulse of it, the wildness of it slamming into his ribs. The shake it sent to his fingers, his knees. The way it now beat and yearned for the person on the other side of the field, a beacon of golden light that was now racing toward him.

The pain it took to get here had never been more worth it. To hold her, to feel her fingers on his face, tangled in his hair.

It was a price he’d pay a thousand times over just to be here now.

Slipping away always terrified him. There was a moment where there was nothing but gray. The fog and smoke was filled with wandering forms, the air filled with screams and wails and pleas. All those souls were trapped, desperate to move on. Desperate for another glimpse back into their life. Some were too withered, too aged, to do much of anything but wander, the scrape of their skeletal fingers brushing over the ground.

He wouldn’t let his fear stop him.

Not when he had someone waiting for him.

The process was the same as it always was—a herd of the lost, the damned, the restless, all fighting their way to the shimmering silver door that appeared atop the three ley lines.

He bided his time, fingers vibrating, soul sewing itself back together. The pain he’d felt had been his heart taking root inside his chest again. By the time he reached for the handle, he was himself. Blood roared in his ears as he stepped through and then he was moving, tearing through the field without a backward glance.

The knot around his ribs led him home, a golden beam of light spearing its way right into the darkness above. Kilmorran sat like a beacon in the distance. Even through the stone, he could see the banking glow of the fire and candles she lit.

Warmth.

Home.

Avery.

He moved faster than he ever had, legs blurring in the dark. Those old steps returned to him and he was leaping and stepping his way across the world once more.

And then she was there, in his arms.

Everything—all the years of silence, of screaming to be heard, of watching the world move on around him—had been worth it.

Just for this.

For her.

She shook against him and he didn’t stop his tears as they hooked around his jaw, sinking into her skin. Maybe she would carry the shape of them with her now.