The storm hadn't stopped. If anything, it had grown bolder—wild winds thrashing against the house as though nature itself wanted in. The room smelled of rain, blood, and memory.
Sarah stood in the center, clutching the dagger, its hilt colder than her hands. Ace watched her, quiet, calculating—not like a soldier preparing for war, but like a man facing something personal. Something he couldn't shoot his way through.
"Do you still dream about him?" Ace asked.
Sarah hesitated.
"Yes."
He nodded, jaw tight. "Then the bond is alive."
"I tried to forget."
"You didn't try hard enough."
That stung, but she didn't argue. He was right. She never truly let go of Hal. Even after the violence. Even after the screams in the woods and the blood on her hands. Some part of her had clung to the version of him that once held her like she was holy.
That was the part Hal had used to stay tethered.
"There's a ritual," she said. "But it's old. Dangerous."
"Let me guess," Ace said, stepping closer. "You need blood. Yours."
"And something else," she added. "Something… I never gave him."
Ace's voice lowered. "What?"
She looked up at him, eyes burning. "Love."
A silence fell between them, thick with all the words they'd never said. And then—
Thud.
From downstairs.
Then another.
Slow. Heavy. Steady.
"He's in the house," Ace whispered.
Sarah's breath caught. "He's drawing me to him."
"Then we don't run," Ace said, stepping beside her. "We finish this."
She tightened her grip on the dagger. "You still love me?"
His answer was a whisper in the dark. "Enough to kill him. Again."
They moved together, silent and sure, down the stairs where the shadows waited—and somewhere in the black, a dead man smiled with Sarah's name on his lips.