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He nudged the pocket watch his father had given him on his tenth birthday. It was a beautiful piece of craftsmanship—silver inlaid with carvings of thistles and the sea. In the middle of it all, a green stone to match the one he wore on his ring. He carried it with him until he died. There were scratch marks from where he turned it over and over again in his palm, the metal worn smooth around the sides.

Avery lifted it with gentle fingers, turning it over in her hand.

His name had been inscribed on the back.

“Royan,” she breathed. “Royan Wolfe.”

There was that tug again, a lasso around his midsection hauling him closer and closer to the mist that separated them from each other. He was becoming known—seen in a way he had not been in so many long years. If he reached out his hand, the divide would shrink to next to nothing.

“Royan James, actually. After my father, Murphy James.” She ran her thumb over the carving of a thistle. “Thistles are meant to offer protection, you know. They’re meant to keep you safe.”

For all the ones that grew around the estate, for the ones he carried in his pocket, they’d failed to protect him, in the end.

“Will this help?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered, though she still couldn’t hear him. He hoped whatever odd connection they’d established over this last week and a half was enough for her to figure out his meaning. “Coupled with the journal and the portrait I am…” He lifted his hand, mist weaving between his fingers. “I am as close as I’ve ever been.”

In a way, it frightened him.

He had spent so long cloaked in shadow that he wasn’t used to being watched. Noticed. And once he was through, once he could show himself, he would have to let her take him in. Study him, in the way he’d been able to study her these last days.

Perhaps it would not be so terrible to be known.

Not by someone as…charming as her.

He had watched her long enough to know that would never be a word she used to describe herself, but she was tenacious and quick-witted, sharp with her retorts but oddly tender, a bruise given human form.

No, it would not be so terrible.

“Bring me through,” he murmured, staring at her. “I tire of these tiles.”

Avery nodded to herself, shoving the watch in her pocket. Outside, the sky began to darken into a menacing shade of purple-black.

“We should go before the storm fully hits,” he said, still watching her. “You’ll catch your death if you’re caught in it.”

“Time to go,” she said, almost as if she’d heard him. She hesitated only once. When she turned, she was nearly pressed up against him.

Dead he might be, but he was still a man.

At this height, she would have to crane her neck all the way back to look at him. His hands would align with her hips and waist as if they were constructed to be held by him. Her cheek would rest over the empty space his heart had once sat, now locked away beneath the stone.

“Will I lose you?” she asked, voice wavering. “If I leave here with these…what if you fade? What if you can’t…what if you can’t travel with me?”

Wolfe sighed, lifting a hand. He brushed an invisible thumb around the curve of her cheek. It would be the last moment he had unseen with her, and he wanted something that was just his.

“I have a feeling that all the forces in the world couldn’t keep me here now,” he answered, words far too husky for sense. “I go where you go, grá.”

For a moment, he thought maybe she heard him. Saw him. Her eyes snapped up and locked to his.

There’d been too many faces in this castle over the years. Some that stayed for years. Some that came for a visit and simply moved on. He watched each of them carefully. He monitored how they treated his things—his home. Some were better than others. Some were reverent and careful, musing about what his life must have been like. Others were greedy, grubby little fingers opening cabinets to see what valuables had been left behind.

In all two hundred years, he had never felt this.

A buzz, a hum, a tethering to his very soul.

“You’re with me,” she murmured.

He nodded only once. “Aye. I’m with you.”