Page 75 of Dark Night of the Soul

“Only when necessary.” He scooped them off onto a plate.

I’d never seen him cook or do anything domestic in all the time I’d known him. It was… weird. Had I awoken into some alternate dimension?

In Walker Manor someone else did the cooking. Grace mostly, after she arrived. When I was still hunting relics, Kincade had shown up, parked himself in the spare bedroom, and never left. We’d never been alone together. Not like this.

Even traveling together, we stayed in hotels, had room service, slept in separate areas.

I was still trying to work it all out when he put a mug in my hand.

“Here.”

Perfectly taupe coffee and it smelled like heaven.

“You know how to summon me now,” I said.

He smirked then handed me a plate.

I plopped down at the small four-person dining table and ate like I’d been starving. I couldn’t remember my last meal. I tried to think back to when that was, but the days blended into each other and were foggy. My mind couldn’t figure out where one memory stopped, and another started. And by the time I’d finished and pushed away the plate, I realized he stood on the opposite end of the room watching me in his careful, calm way.

Ten feet. Was that too much? Not enough? I didn’t know.

I didn’t like how far away he was and not only the physical distance. This whole… thing… that happened to me was wedged between us so tight, it’d take nothing short of a miracle to remove it.

And that’s what they wanted. Fucking Sebastian Crane wanted to turn me against him because he hated the thought that Kincade picked me over them.

Vormund was merely the executioner.

I thought back to the car ride. Even that had been… a lot. And not because I didn’t want it. Because who knew what was going to make me turn into a weapon? He was there, filling up the space, and I was trying to avoid everything about him.

And then the nightmare when I dozed off. The hospital. Testing me with the guard. And the pressure built in my head until it snapped me awake. The only thing that made it go away was digging my nails into his palm while he drove.

I looked at his hands then. He held his own mug but wasn’t drinking.

“I can’t live like this,” I blurted.

He said nothing for a long minute. “Like what?”

I waved at the distance between us. “Like this.”

When he said nothing, I forged on.

“I need to understand what triggers it. We need to understand.”

His brows drew together. “And then what?”

“And then we can exist in the same room without you hovering twenty feet away like I’m going to explode.”

He didn’t respond, his jaw flexing in that way it did when he was working through something he didn’t like.

“What if you do?” he said. “Explode. What if testing it hurts you?”

“What if it doesn’t? What if half of this is fear and we don’t know what the rules are?” I leaned forward, frustration bleeding into my voice. “We can’t live like this, Kincade. I can’t live like this. Not knowing is worse than knowing.”

He set down the mug, folded his arms across his chest, and regarded me with something that might have been interest.

I’d been thinking about the what but not the how, so I decided to wing it. “So, you test me.”

“No.”