Chapter 4
I didn’t plan on running. There was no carefully thought-out escape, no suitcase packed in secret—just an overwhelming need to move—fast, quiet, far. The sun had barely finished rising. Kael was in the shower, or what passed for one in my old bathroom, grumbling at the water pressure and muttering curses in a language I didn’t recognize. His clothes were drying near the heater, his armor stacked beside the front door.
I grabbed my keys and phone. My shoes were already on, and my breath felt too loud in my chest. I told myself it wasn’t fear. It was instinct—the kind that whispered, "Get out while you still can. " I slipped outside, careful not to let the door creak. The hallway was cold and quiet, the stale air clinging to cheap wallpaper and flickering lights. I wrinkled my nose at the smell but kept moving.
Downstairs, the street was slowly coming alive—commuters with coffee, kids dragging backpacks, the scent of damp concrete rising in waves. I didn’t look back. I made it a block and a half before the strange sensations started. It was subtle at first—a drag in my chest, pressure behind my eyes. My steps slowed. My head throbbed in a low, rhythmic pulse, like something beating on a war drum.
Then the pain hit. Hot and sharp, it bloomed in my spine, like something had hooked itself inside me and yanked hard. My knees buckled, and I reached for a lamppost, breath stolen by its sudden force. I pressed my forehead against the cool metal and tried not to scream. My skin buzzed. My veins burned, and then I felt him. Not saw. Not heard. Felt. His presence barreled into my senses like a physical thing, even though he wasn’t near me. Not anymore. And that’s when I knew. I wasn’t just connected to him. I was bound. The magic—or whatever it was—wasn’t symbolic. It wasn’t poetic. It was real. And I was trying to tear it.
I turned around, body aching, and stumbled back the way I came. Each step toward the apartment peeled the pain away like lifting a weight from my lungs. My limbs loosened. My breath evened. I felt whole again when I reached the front steps, but shaken. Something inside me had warned me and pulled me like a leash. Kael was waiting.
He stood just inside the apartment door, wet hair dripping onto the collar of my oversized hoodie. He looked more human-like this—barefoot, freshly showered, tension still radiating from every inch of his body—but no less dangerous.
“I told you not to leave,” he said.
I shut the door behind me, chest still heaving. “You were in the shower. You didn’t tell me anything.”
“You felt it.” It wasn’t a question.
I nodded, hand still gripping the doorknob like it might keep me from falling over.
“Why does it hurt?” I asked, voice quiet and raw. “I didn’t even make it that far.”
“Because it’s stronger now.” He stepped closer, slow but deliberate. “The bond is forming.”
I laughed, short and humorless. “Like a magical parasite?”
His jaw clenched. “Like a tether. Between your magic and mine.”
“I didn’t ask for this.”
“Neither did I.”
The words echoed like an accusation. I walked past him, arms wrapped tight around my middle. My chest still hurt from whatever had tried to yank me in half. My body remembered what my brain was trying to ignore. “You said we needed answers,” I said, sinking onto the edge of the couch. “Fine. Let’s start with this: What are you?”
Kael remained standing, arms folded. “I was a commander. A soldier.”
“In the Middle Ages?”
“In the Kingdom of Edriath. The year was 1472.”
I blinked. “You’re not even from here.”
“I’m not from now.”
The weight of it settled on me like lead. Time traveler. Magic tether. Bonded powers. This wasn’t just about fixing a crack in my ceiling anymore.
“And me?” I asked, voice quieter now. “What does that make me?”
His gaze softened. Just slightly. “I don’t know. Yet.” He admitted. That “yet” held weight; I didn’t like it. It implied a future I hadn’t agreed to.
I leaned back, staring up at the cracked ceiling. The spot he’d fallen through still bore marks of impact—splintered wood, exposed insulation, the ugly scar of whatever force had brought him here. My life had changed instantly, and now I was tethered to a stranger I couldn’t outrun.
“We can’t leave each other,” I whispered.
“Not without pain,” he confirmed. “Eventually… maybe not even then.”
We sat in silence, the air between us charged and still. He was across the room, but I could still feel him. The bond hummed low in my chest, not painful now, but ever-present. Like a second pulse. A second shadow. I didn’t know how long I sat there, trying to breathe through its weight. But eventually, I spoke the only truth I had left. “I don’t know if I’m afraid of you,” I murmured, “or what you’ve made me feel.”
Kael didn’t respond. He didn’t have to. The magic was already had.