Chapter 5

The apartment was quiet again. The kind of calm that didn’t feel restful, but instead watchful. Like the walls had started paying attention.

Kael hadn’t moved since I spoke. He stood near the edge of the living room, still damp from the shower, arms folded over his chest. The hoodie I gave him hung loose over his frame, but somehow, it didn’t soften him. It made him look even more displaced, as though time hadn’t just dropped him into the wrong century, but had stripped something vital away in the process. I couldn’t look at him for too long without feeling… unsettled, not in fear. Not anymore, but I was feeling something I didn't fully understand.

“I meant what I said,” I murmured, unsure if I wanted him to respond or stay silent. “About not knowing if I’m afraid of you. Or what you make me feel at all.” His gaze shifted, not toward me, but toward the shattered candle on the counter. The books were still strewn across the floor—the subtle, humming weight of whatever bound us buzzing against my skin.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said, but the words sounded too practiced, like he’d said it to someone before.

“Then what do you call this?” I whispered. “This thing in my chest that won’t stop buzzing when you’re near?” He didn’t answer right away. Just moved toward the couch and sat down, his movements stiff with the kind of pain that came from deep places—both physical and emotional.

“There are bonds,” he said, “older than time. Forged through magic, through war, through blood. Some are made by choice. Others… aren’t.”

“And which one is this?” He looked at me then. Looked. And I saw it in his eyes—the same thing I’d felt when he dropped into my world. Recognition.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I’ve felt it before.”

My stomach tightened. “Before?”

Kael leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, fingers laced together. He stared at the floor like it might offer him answers. “Before I was pulled here. There were signs. Flashes. Pieces of dreams that weren’t mine. A face I couldn’t place. A voice that kept saying my name.”The air in the room felt heavier.

“And when I woke up—” His voice caught. He clenched his jaw. “I was no longer in my world.”

I swallowed. My mouth had gone dry. “You think it was me? That I… triggered this?”

“I think something used you,” he said. “Or used me. Or both.” That didn’t make me feel better.

We sat in silence again. The kind that had nothing comforting in it. Just the raw ache of truth neither of us had asked for. I pulled my knees up onto the couch and wrapped my arms around them, chin resting on the worn fabric of my leggings. “When you say you’ve felt this before… do you mean the bond?”

He hesitated. “No. Not exactly. This is different. Stronger. More volatile.”

“Great,” I muttered. “So I’m breaking magical history now, too.”

“You don’t understand,” he said, voice low. “Bonds like this… they’re rare. Powerful. And dangerous.”

“You keep using that word. Dangerous. But you haven’t told me what that means.”

He turned his head toward me slowly, like he wasn’t sure how much I could handle. “Dangerous,” he said, “because it ties your magic to mine. Because if one of us breaks emotionally and physically, the other will feel it. Possibly share in it. Possibly… fall with it.”

I stared at him, blood turning to ice. “So if you die—”

“You’d feel it,” he said. “And if you die, I will too.” The room tilted.

I looked around the apartment—the glowing remnants of last night’s chaos still in every corner. A flickering light. A cracked lamp. And Kael, sitting across from me, like a truth I hadn’t wanted to hear.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” I said, barely above a whisper.

“No,” he agreed. “It wasn’t.”

I didn’t know how long we sat like that—me curled into myself, him bent under the weight of something I couldn’t name—but eventually the stillness broke. Kael stood, slow and deliberate, and crossed to the window. He didn’t pull the curtain back; he stood beside it, hands behind his back like a soldier waiting for an order that would never come.

“I used to think I’d die in battle,” he said after a long pause. “On a field soaked in blood, sword in hand, spine broken or bleeding out. That kind of death made sense to me.”

I watched him quietly.

“But this?” His head bowed. “This is something else. This is unraveling. Slowly.”

I didn’t know what to say, and maybe that was the point. Whatever magic had dragged him through time hadn’t come with instructions. It had come with me, and I didn’t even know who I was anymore.