The Inquisitor's Ghost

Author's Note: This chapter has two soundtracks. From Ember's perspective: Near You Always by Jewel. From Cole's perspective: Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol.

Chapter 27 – Down by the River

The Light shall lead her safely

Through the paths of this world, and into the next

For she who trusts in the Maker, fire is her water

As the moth sees light and goes toward flame

She should see fire and go towards Light

- Transfigurations 10:1

Though the click of rock against rock was a small noise in the night, Ember woke instantly when the tiny tick reached her ears. Like most sounds heard at night, she couldn't be sure of the direction from which it had come.

While she'd been sleeping in her bedroll beneath the stars, the moon had risen in the midnight sky. Only its luminance outlined against the Frostback Mountain was visible to her, and it made the darkness of her immediate surroundings seem even blacker.

Tadwinks must've been moving around, Ember mused as she spotted her snowy horse tethered to the oak a few feet away, an occasional soft muffled thunking of her hooves on the loose soil.

The Inquisitor strained to hear any further noise as she slowly turned her head from side to side to pierce the gloom with her eyes, or to hear any new noise that might reach her through the now-silent darkness.

After a while of hearing nothing but the sounds of nature at night, she sat up slowly in her bedroll instead of settling back down. She looked about, searching the darkness around the makeshift camp.

"Cole?" she asked in a hushed voice as she crawled out of her bedroll, fully clothed in her armor. She put on her boots before picking up her dagger that was lying beside her.

The Inquisitor knitted her brow as she searched her camp for him only to find it empty. Her mouth was dry and she found her canteen only to discover it was bone dry. With her canteen in hand, Ember headed out across the dark countryside towards the river not far away.

The clouds had all but cleared away now, leaving a bright full moon shining in the night sky above her. It was warm out, and humid, the weather a nice change from the cold of Skyhold. A mist hovered over the grass-covered ground she trekked. She sucked in a deep breath of clean air then let it out again slowly, simply absorbing the peace and tranquility of her surroundings.

A sharp bend in the river was marked by a thick clump of trees standing big and dark against a midnight sky. She skirted the wood until she found the dirt path that led down to the river itself.

Minutes later and she emerged from the forest to a small clearing among the trees, where the springy turf grew to the edge of the riverbank. The river was wide and ran dark and silent, the trees standing like sentinels, big and brooding. A low ground mist enveloped everything in a soft skirt of billowing white.

A full moon hung just above the tops of the trees, blanching the color out of everything, surrounding her in eerie tones of black and grey, except for the river, where it formed slinky silver patterns on the silent mass as it moved at a slow and lazy pace. It so still and silent she could even hear the water softly lapping the pebbly ground several yards away from her.

Ember came to a sudden stop.

There he was.

Cole's back was to her and he was waist-deep in the water. He stood absolutely still, only the tips of his long fingers trailing across the calm surface of the water, his skin so tantalizingly ethereal and startlingly white it didn't look real—but then it never had.

Remaining unseen in the tree line, her eyes greedily followed the long lines of his lanky form with the whipcord-lean frame of an assassin. His body was as smooth and sleek and dangerous as a blade. She watched the glistening beads of moisture dotting the rippling lean muscles along his pale back, and lower to the curving hipbones that rose above the water.

Maker's breath! Just a little lower and she would be able to see everything!

Ever so slowly he raised his face towards the moon. She could see the side of his face now as he drank in the sight of the moon that beamed down on him benignly with its silvery-white light as if to worship him. He was a shimmering vision of golden hair and pale, pearlescent skin with his face lifted up to the moon, droplets of water dripping from the ends of his shaggy hair to drip slowly down his muscled back.

"One by one they follow me, laughing, drowning, into the sea. The rest of the poem is sad," Cole murmured softly, keeping his back to her.

"But the start was so cheery," she replied sarcastically.

"It sounds different here," he murmured softly, still not turning to face her. "The water changes the song."

She had to swallow before she could speak, "What are you doing here, Cole?"

"I've never been swimming." She watched his throat muscles move with the words, his voice rasping like coarse sandpaper across her ragged senses.

Her eyes snapped up to his face when he turned to face her, his movements slow and painfully deliberate. The wayward strands of blonde hair leaked water down his sharply chiseled features and lay in wet strands across his forehead. Her breath caught on the lump in her throat when she was hit with eyes so blue they were crystal, shaded by eyelashes so long, and silky black.

Her gaze fell from his eyes and she sucked in a sharp breath and nearly groaned at the sight of him from the front. With no apologies for her stare, she drank in the sight of him: the tightly corded arms, the sleek abdomen, the leashed power, the stark, hard muscles slick with water and flexing under her gaze, as if she'd just dragged her fingers over them.

"Do you want to swim with me?" The rough rasp of his voice ignited a flame beneath her heart.

The moon slid behind a lonely cloud. Blackness engulfed her suddenly, and Ember's cheeks warmed to the bright red color of her hair as she silently removed her weapons and armor, letting them fall forgotten to the ground at her feet to join his. Satisfaction surged within her when his eyes widened and his breath quickened.

She moved on weak legs towards the edge of the bank. There were no words and there was no hesitation in her step as she crossed the grass to the water's edge.

Cole's smile flashed white in his shadowed face as his eyes locked with hers, watching her, intent on her, darkening to a look that was almost primitively possessive as he stalked toward her in the water with a ghostly kind of grace.

Cole didn't just move, he glided, silently through the water towards her. Even the moon revered him by coming out from behind its cloud, pooling him in stark silvery light as he continued his slow graceful journey.

There was none like him in this world, or the next.

And he was all hers.

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Cole's body moved unconsciously through the water, knowing where it needed to go, his eyes never leaving her face.

He watched her slowly work her way through the water toward him, her eyes moving over him like flickering torches of burning light.

She was all he needed to remain in this world. She was an everlasting torch of burning light, pushing back the shadows that always surrounded him, preventing him from being lost in them forever. Because of her he was more than just compassion. Because of her his purpose was greater than just helping. Because of her he existed, no longer an easily forgotten, unseen, unwanted being trapped somewhere between what was real and unreal.

Because of her he was alive.

Ember stopped directly in front of him, dark water a line across her stomach. Greenish-blue eyes sparkled with something warm up at him, burning out everything else but the power of her light - light so bright it blinded. Wherever she was, she stood in her own pool of light.

Moving on its own, his body pressed against hers, water rippling around him with the movement. It was strange how different they were—he was all hard and sharp, she all soft and curved. Dissimilar but fitting, like a leaf on a branch.

His hand rose out of the water to round her hip, curl around her waist, coming to rest against the small of her back. Her skin was slippery wet and incredibly hot beneath his palm. The thick, coiling mass of her hair unfurled over his fingers in a heavy fall of fire that rippled its way to the base of her spine.

On the air he tasted desire. One touch and she wanted him. He would never understand why. She was the only one. No one else liked what they saw when they looked at him, or liked when he touched them. But she did.

His other hand reached for her face—it was like trying to capture a dancing shard of sunlight. The cool tips of his fingers slid against skin like fine satin, the inner recesses of his mouth springing into life with a need to taste what he could feel.

Say something.

Say something good.

"I like swimming."

Why?

Why did you say that?

Instead of frowning and moving away like he thought she would, her apple red lips parted into his favorite smile and then he felt the warm press of her fingers on his skin as she reached up to stroke his face. It was a simple gesture of comfort, yet it almost brought him to his knees.

Try again.

The right words this time.

Find them, put them together.

"Five years. Even then - back when - I knew but didn't see." Cole grimaced, struggling to find the words he wanted that hovered on the tip of his tongue like floating dandelion seeds.

Her fingertips trailed gently, gently down his cheek. "Knew what?" His eyes dropped to her lips, watching the end of the last word form.

"That I love you." His voice broke with all the unwavering certainty behind those words, and that one statement encased in a whisper seemed to bring their entire world to a halt. "I've felt it in others, but it's always tangled with something else. You can never tug it loose to stand on its own without tearing it."

He took her face in his hands and pressed his forehead to hers. Something burned behind his eyes, sharp like the sting of acid. "I look at you and I feel it—untwisted and unraveled. Inside of me the word stands on its own. It can never be broken or torn because it's not tangled with anything else." He was looking at her desperately through warm liquid that blurred his vision, wanting her to understand the depth of what he was feeling but always struggled to put into words.

He caught her eyes with his own and those soul-stripping gemstones of liquid aquamarine seemed to pour into him. He watched diamond dewdrops glisten behind her lashes as she stared up at him, tears beginning to shimmer in the shallows of her gaze.

"On its own, I love you too." It was the smallest whisper in the world, so quiet, so soft that the breeze in the trees completely covered it.

But he heard it, and those words uttered in that voice coiled around him, squeezing, until he felt so physically weak it was difficult to continue standing. The flesh of his chest seared. He could actually feel her words etch themselves onto his heart, deep and burning and permanent.

She sees me.

She remembers me.

She protects me.

She wants me.

She needs me.

She loves me.

She. Loves. Me.

No one else ever has.

But she does.

His eyes fell and narrowed on her mouth. He wanted it on him, so much so that the inside of his mouth had moistened in anticipation, his lips filling with warm pulsing blood.

His wet palm slid slowly up her spine, over flesh streaked with scars, going under her unruly profusion of red curls, finding, caressing the back of her neck. He felt her shiver, just like she always did when his fingertips touched the Chantry's sunburst symbol that had been burned into the skin on the nape of her neck by her parents.

His fingers tightened on the nape of her neck and then slowly pulled her toward him, his gaze never leaving hers as he drew her closer, eliminating the space between them. He heard her suck in a sharp ragged breath, taking his air into her lungs the second before his bottom lip brushed lightly against her top - her fire instantly melting his ice.

"Please love me forever." His voice was hoarse from the raw tightness in his throat. "As I will never stop loving you."

His hands trembled as they lifted to carefully cradle her face between them, his fingers splaying out over her cheeks as he softly caught her bottom lip between his lips. Soft, soft drops of summer rain on his lips. The taste of starlight on his tongue. Soft sighs he inhaled deeply, greedily. Gasping, shuddering, air seeking, and then lips again. Tongue in his mouth, behind his lips, dancing and twirling with his own - slick and warm - the lick of a flame against a log in a hearth.

He drank deeply from her mouth, her hands dragging up his wet chest, roaming over his shoulders, smoothing over his neck, her fingertips following the curve of his jaw. He leaned into her every touch, like the cats do when he pets them. Her hips pressed against his and his blood raged out of control, that part of his body throbbing like it had its own heartbeat.

Want her.

Above me, under me, all around me.

Need.

So much.

Like air.

His hands moved lower until he gripped the backs of her thighs, and lifted her out of the water. His mouth never left hers as he carried her a few feet and laid her gently down on her back on the grass beside the river.

The moon hung like a silver lantern in the dark sky, its silvery-white light etching out every soft curve of her, every dip that glistened with moisture. Her freckled cheeks were flushed. Her chest rose and fell unevenly with each inhale, each exhale, drawing in deep, tremulous breaths through lips so red and full and swollen. So much hair – a thick tumbling mass of tightly-wound corkscrews that flamed around her head like a halo of fire. Stars not as bright as the light shining out of eyes that were deep swirling blues and greens.

Lightly, Ember lifted her hand to cup his cheek and gave him a slow, heavy-lidded smile. "Breathe, Cole."

He let out a breath he didn't even know he was holding, and couldn't help but smile down at her. Gentle. She always saw and she always worried. It echoed when she breathed. He could feel it seep into him, break the skin, enter blood.

"You make it hard to breathe," he confessed in a roughened undertone. "You're shinier like this, but not where everyone can see. Only I can see. I like that. I like that this part of you is only for me."

"That's because you're mine." Her voice was a softly lilting lullaby.

He leaned over her, balanced on his elbow. His hand lifted to push her tumbling mane of fiery curls back from her brow before letting them - the very tips of his fingers - trail slowly, oh so slowly, over every inch of her face, wanting to feel every feature beneath the pads of his fingers.

Her eyelids fluttered shut when the tips of his fingers grazed up the line of her jaw to her ear before cupping her cheek. The pad of his thumb lightly stroked the arch of her eyelashes where they lay flickering against her cheek. With a sigh she turned her face into his palm and he bent his head to let the tip of his nose nuzzle her other cheek.

"Everything I am needs everything you are, dear heart," he breathed against the heated smoothness of her cheek.

His lips brushed feather-light across her cheek as he pressed his palm against her flat stomach, feeling the muscles quiver. His hand slid down the taut wall of her stomach, along her inner thigh, until his fingers smoothed over soft sweet flesh with just the lightest brush of his fingers.

She gasped then trembled and it was because of him, a delicate little ripple of response that was nearly his undoing. Silk was not as soft as her skin and he felt it came alive beneath his fingertips, soft sighs passing between her lips as he touched the very heart of her.

Her body began moving restlessly beneath him, scoring his back and arms with her fingernails, moving her legs in quick, anxious movements. "Please, Cole…" she pleaded huskily, begged, dreadfully needy, fingers tugging at his hair to lift his face so she could feverishly kiss his mouth, his jaw, his neck. "I've missed this so much… please…"

Cole pushed off his elbow and slid on top of her, feeling every tremble and quake, until his face was close to hers. The muscles in his arms braced either side of her as he lowered himself between her thighs that opened for him, like he belonged there. Never having belonged anywhere, that simple action made him want to crawl right inside her skin, possessively claim total occupancy.

He bent his head and kissed her. And slowly entered her body with his.

A raw sound scraped the very walls of his chest as a frisson streaked through him. Everything around him seemed to fall away, narrowing his world to nothing but the indescribable sensation of his body entering into hers— becoming her— fitting inside her like the missing piece of himself.

She instantly arched, the vibrations from her moan leaving her mouth to flow straight into his, her hips surging up to meet him as he sank into her— slowly, gradually, deeper and deeper until there was no more of him to offer.

Her lips broke from his on a silent cry, her head falling back, her eyes falling shut. He went utterly motionless— took an actual pause in life itself as he watched a single tear slip from the corner of her eye to roll gingerly down her temple before disappearing into fiery red curls.

Knowing she was feeling what he was feeling was almost enough to end him completely.

He curled his arms around her shivering body, pressing tight to her, wanting to pull her clear through the wall of flesh preventing them from being one.

Hot. Slick. Tight.

I want to live here.

Right here.

With a part of me inside her.

Always.

Cole felt the deep rise and then fall of her chest as he buried his face in her warm throat. His limbs shaking and trembling like the leaves did when the wind blew through them, holding onto her like an anchor in deep water.

Deep breath in.

She smells so good.

Slow exhale against the skin of her throat.

Like the color red.

Violent tremors ran through him like waves through water as he drew his hips back and pushed into her again. A quick, quiet gasp escaped her as she writhed and quivered, shattering just that little bit more for him.

Don't hurt her.

He made a smaller, gentler move with his hips.

Don't hurt her.

He barely moved at all.

Don't hurt her.

He stilled completely, chaotic forces of sudden panic and dread running rampant inside him. He couldn't think beyond the fear that he was causing her pain—again.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Wringing me out.

Wrought right and rigid.

Can't relax…

He drew in a shaky breath and held on to it, severe tension scoring his face, his thoughts a million buzzing bees inside his head – stinging and blinding. The world seemed to be closing in on him. So overcome. So undone. Suffocating—he felt as if he was suffocating. He couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't move, couldn't—

"Cole."

He pulled back to brace himself on his forearms on either side of her and looked down into her eyes—breathless and fearful.

"You're not hurting me," she murmured reassuringly between gasps. "So relax and stop worrying."

How does she know the buzzing thoughts in my head?

He nodded, trying to relax some of the screaming worry and tension from his body. But it didn't happen. Too many muscles had locked and knotted with fear and apprehension.

"I… I can't." His voice was tortured.

Ember was breathing so heavily, she had to catch her breath before she responded. "Focus on me. Nothing but me." Her fingers tangled lovingly into his hair, calm and soothing.

He clenched his eyes shut, and gritted out, "But… I can't. It's all crowded in my head. Knots on top of tangles on-"

"Look at me," Ember instructed gently, her fingers running down to stroke at his taut cheeks. He opened his eyes and fixed his gaze on hers. "Yes, just like that. Good. Now, deep breathe. Come on. Good, nice and deep. Now release it slowly. That's right. Feel the breath in your lungs, my skin against yours."

Her fingers danced up his arms, across his taut shoulders and into his hair again, drawing him down to press his ear to her chest where he could feel the persistent throb of her beating heart.

"Do you hear that? That's the sound of my heart beating. Focus on it. Hear nothing else." The tone comforted him and caressed the ragged edges of his panic.

He heard it, the unsteady beat of her heart, and suddenly it was the only thing he could hear. He could feel the vibrations of the strings of her heart being plucked and strummed through the cage encasing the precious organ. The tension contracting the muscles of his body began to ease as the melody of her heart played against his ear, soaked into each bone of his body, a tune melodiously soaring through his blood.

Her breath broke on a whimper and only then did he realize his body was unconsciously moving in and out of hers in tandem with the beat of her heart thundering beneath his ear. He let the sound guide him, his hips surging forward again and again, thrusting him deep to the rhythm.

She moaned his name so perfectly, as if she was meant to say it, and he lifted his head from her chest and captured her parted lips, widened them, and plunged deeply in. One of her hands clasped around his nape while the other ran in a feverish sweep down the full length of his back. Her legs hitched, curled higher, and drew him in deeper, her ankles locked together behind his back. There was a groan — a raw, agonized groan — as her fingernails clawed death grips into the muscles of his back, as if she feared he would leave her like before.

She was panting for breath by the time he drew his mouth away, giving only enough space between their lips so he could look down into her face. Skin slid wetly against skin, the air between them hot and stifling and filled with the sound of their labored breathing. Anchored in the ever-changing blues and greens of her eyes, his movements grew stronger, deeper, fiercer.

What is that sound? Cole's eyes rolled back into his head. Such beautiful singing.

He could hear the most spellbinding music rising on the gentle currents of the air. It summoned an ache he didn't even know he had. Lovely, lovely singing. The sweetest of tunes. It sounded like lyrium, but… but it was sweeter, softer, stronger… notes that were a lighter shade of white twisted with threads of red and tied to strands of green.

And it's coming from us.

She was a bard and he was her melody - their notes dripping in the air, dancing along the surface of the water. The dulcet tones shining, shimmering, sharp. The most beautiful melody he'd ever heard - a song that was theirs.

Suddenly, something dangerous was also dancing in the air, spinning silver spider webs of magic into the moonlight. He drew in a deep breath, the air redolent of electricity, dreams, and inexplicable mystery that was all too familiar.

We are being watched.

He was sure of it.

Cole looked down and studied Ember's face, trying to determine if she could see them too.

But she didn't see them. She didn't sense them. They were too far away.

But he could.

Across the Veil, spirits and demons alike were not watching them as he'd initially thought, but listening. Silent as death, they listened to the song that they were singing. They were drawn to the melody just as they were drawn to the sound of lyrium.

Coveting her and me.

Her lips feathered over his, across his cheekbones, his eyes, his temples, leaving fire leaping just under his skin wherever they moved.

"C-Co… le…" she sobbed as she wrapped her arms around him, pressing her warm face into his throat.

Her fingers splayed on his back as his body rolled in slow, rolling waves against her damp skin. Hot inside skin that suddenly felt tight over his bones, he slid into her tortuously slow but jarringly deep. He was breathing in a hard, raw rhythm, veins a river of fire that fevered his skin to the point of boiling. Beads of sweat rolling languidly down the muscles of his back as he filled every part of her—a slow, slow merging of souls.

Her name laced with the color red was in every inch of him now, like a sticky sweet nectar that filled every fiber of his being. He belonged to her. She owned him. There was no fear of his possessing her because it was she who possessed him. If she said, Die for me, Cole, he would gladly bleed himself dry.

"You are all the world to me." He was hardly aware that the strained words had left his constricted throat, so consumed was he by the look, smell, and feel of her. "Breath to my life."

His hand ran possessively down her side, over the curve of her hip, to squeeze her thigh. His fingers hooked behind her knee and in one deft motion, he lifted her knee up to his hip. He pushed into her, hard, and she cried out his name as her body snapped taut beneath him, clamping onto him so tight.

Breath, stuttered and broken, hissed between his clenched teeth as her muscles stretched then tightened in a ripple along him. He could feel her— actually feel her beating all around him, like waves crashing against the shore.

A stinging whip of sensation shot through his body with a crack of thunder that shook his bones and caused his body to shake— shake violently, blood screaming, a skittering crackle of electric energy across his skin. There was a sudden coiling deep within him that tightened briefly before spiraling out of control.

His head snapped back, arching his spine and clenching his muscles, the cords in his neck straining, breath exploding from his mouth as pure sensation split through him like forked lightning in a series of violent, electric shocks.

Nothing after that moment made a single ounce of sense to him as everything inside exploded with light in its purest form and the sweetest music so powerful it momentarily shattered his shape, his existence. If it weren't for his own skin containing him, he would have been scattered everywhere and nowhere at once. Then, each shattered piece of himself poured into her with violent shudders. And she took all of him, his very essence. Every inch and part of himself was consumed by her until there was nothing left.

For a moment, Cole thought he'd died. Something deep inside him had been lost forever. He didn't know how it happened, it just happened. But as he lay there, heavy on her, his body still attacked by the pulsing aftershocks, he knew that something vital had gone from him— irrevocably changing him.

Cole's eyelids slowly fluttered open to the sight of flame-bright hair spun in fiery tendrils around a heartbreakingly blissful, smiling face with tears in half-mast eyes of twilight. The body cradling his glowing with a white-green light, as if the stars themselves had leaned down to embrace her.

He let his arms wrap around her. Her body was soft and pliant as she curled into him. They stayed like that, still intimately connected, a completed puzzle, with his face buried in the crook of her neck as her fingers played with the ends of his hair. He drew in deep, contented breaths as he listened to her breathing slow, feeling her shuddering body calm.

He felt like quiet.

Rare, peaceful, perfect quiet.

Only with her did he ever feel like this— no whispers in his head, no thoughts of pain or hurt, just sweet blissful silence.

After a while, Ember made them return to camp where she adjusted them on her bedroll so he was lying on his back, holding her in his arms.

"You sleep right here with me," she stated firmly, taking no for an answer as she draped her bare leg over both of his, her slender arm thrown across his chest. "And no disappearing acts. I want to feel you and see you the moment I wake up."

Cole ran a forefinger across the back of her hand lying on top of his chest. "I won't leave. Right here, no disappearing, no moving unless you want me to."

She nestled in closer to him. "Promise you'll lay with me, just like this," she murmured, hugging him so tight, he didn't know where he began or she ended. "For all the nights of my life."

He rubbed the tip of his nose and then his cheek against the top of her red curls that spilled across his chest and throat. "And every night after."

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Two days later and snow was crunching beneath their feet as they trekked the last remaining distance to Skyhold.

A sliver of moonlight broke through the dense clouds, its light falling upon the Inquisitor who wore her superior hunter armor and forest green cloak pulled tight around her head, shielding her face from the bitter cold whipping around her.

Beside her, the Ghost of the Spire wore ebony leather armor and duel daggers strapped to his back. The moonlight turned his flaxen hair to a white-silver and dimly illuminated his sharply defined features.

Ember's greenish-blue eyes shifted to the side to watch him chew on his bottom lip. Earlier that day they'd received a raven from Leliana saying Rhys and Evangeline had arrived at Skyhold. He hadn't said much since then. He didn't say it, but she could tell he was nervous about meeting his old friends, afraid they wouldn't want to see him.

Moments later, and they reached the top of the mountain to see Skyhold in the distance.

Ember smiled, "The moment we get home I'm going to draw us a hot bath and then-"

The Inquisitor stumbled in the snow, nearly falling to her knees as the mark on her hand began to crackle with green glowing energy, sparks flying off of it, as if it were searching for a nearby Rift.

The snow-covered ground shook beneath her feet and the clouds above the Valley of Sacred Ashes began to gather and swirl, rapidly rotating in a spiral arrangement, like a hurricane. At the center formed a funnel-shaped cloud, twisting downwards faster and faster, until the funnel reached the ground, like a tornado. Then, the tornado exploded in a burst of green light, tearing the Veil.

Panic and apprehension poured through the Inquisitor's bloodstream, the power of it grinding her heart against her ribs.

"Corypheus," Ember gasped as she watched a breach into the Fade form in the sky in the Valley of Sacred Ashes.

Either I close the Breach again, or it swallows the world! Ember thought frantically.

In the distance she could see her advisors and companions running out of Skyhold, staring up at the Breach. She knew her advisors. They would be sending her companions out to the Breach to investigate.

"We must go, now, before it's too late," she whispered, looking down, only then realizing that she was gripping Cole's hand with hers. Her face was pale, her eyes stricken with terrible distress and foreboding that was tearing her apart inside as she lifted her face to his.

"Are you afraid of being bound?" she asked, seeing the fear in his eyes.

"No," he murmured softly. "I am already bound to you."

"What is it you fear?" she asked gently.

"Losing you," he answered, his voice rusty and low.

Her free hand lifted between them to cup his soft, velvety white cheek. "You aren't going to lose me," she murmured soothingly. "Together we will face that monster sent from the bowels of hell, and nothing will stop us from sending him back there."

Cole nodded, but he wasn't assured.

He was terrified.

He couldn't stopping remembering what the old woman had said – that soon death would be coming for her.

His fingers tightened around hers.

He wouldn't let that happen.