His laugh was full of relief. “How is this possible, Trin? You...” His voice roughened. “I was holding you. I could barely feel you breathing, and you couldn’t seem to hear me. Then you vanished.” His hands slid over my cheeks. “Just gone.”

“I’m sorry—”

“God, Trin. Don’t apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I know, but I also know what you went through, and I wish you hadn’t.” I turned my head, kissing the center of his palm. “I would change that if I could.”

The bridge of his nose brushed mine. “What happened?”

“My father,” I said, touching the curve of his jaw. “It’s, uh, it’s really out there, but you were right. What he did for you? It was the way he could show he cared, and this...why I didn’t die is because of him. The spell the Crone gave me? It did more than bring you to me. It bonded us together. That mark on my chest? It’s a bonding mark. Like the Protector bond but in reverse and stronger. Because of it, the angel blade didn’t kill me. Just wounded me. I won’t age. I won’t die unless something happens to you.” I pressed a finger to the center of his lower lip. “So, you’re kind of stuck with me for, like, eternity? Congrats.”

Zayne pulled back enough that our eyes could meet. “Are you...if you’re—you wouldn’t lie about something like this.”

“I wouldn’t.” I’d never heard Zayne so flustered before.

His eyes were wide. “I... God, Trin. I don’t know what to say other than how in the Hell could you even suggest that I was stuck with you?”

I laughed, and the rigidity in my muscles started to lessen. “Thought my aging wasn’t a big deal? You’d love me, broken hips and all?”

“I would love you broken hips and all,” he said, one hundred percent serious. “I would love you as much as I do now when you were eighty. There was no way I was going to let any of that get in the way of the time I had with you, but there was going to be nothing easy about watching you slowly leave me, day by day, year by year. And when that day came, I would’ve found my way to you. I would’ve followed. Nothing would have stopped me.”

My throat clogged with emotion. “I know.”

His gaze searched mine. “But to not have to worry about that? Dread that day? To know that you will be beside me fifty years from now? A hundred?”

Now was probably not a good time to mention the whole Antichrist thing. Later.