Chapter 29 Twenty nine

Chapter 29 Twenty nine
Zinnia's POV

The apartment feels wrong before I even open the door, like I can sense the absence waiting on the other side of it. It presses against me in a way I cannot explain, a quiet that is too complete, too deliberate, as if something has already been taken away and the space has not yet learned how to exist without it.

I push the door open anyway and step inside, calling Luke’s name out of habit more than hope, already knowing what the silence will give me in return.

Nothing.

The quiet stretches, heavy and unmoving, filling every corner of the apartment. It is not just the lack of sound that unsettles me, it is the way everything feels paused, as if the life that used to exist here has been carefully removed piece by piece.

I close the door slowly behind me and take a few steps forward, my eyes moving over the kitchen first. The counters are spotless, wiped down to a shine that feels unnatural. The coffee cups are gone from the sink, dried and put away like they were never used. Even the small messes Luke usually leaves behind have disappeared, erased so completely that it feels intentional.

Like he wanted to leave nothing of himself behind.

My chest tightens as that thought settles in. I move further inside, my gaze catching on small details that only make the emptiness more obvious. His shoes are not by the door. His jacket is not draped over the chair. The space he occupied has been cleared so thoroughly that it feels like he has already begun to move on.

I find the note on the fridge.

It is held in place by a magnet, a simple piece of paper that somehow feels heavier than it should. His handwriting is unmistakable, messy and rushed, like he did not want to spend too much time thinking about what he was leaving behind.

Staying at Mike’s for a few days. Need to think. Don’t wait up.

I read it twice, then a third time, searching for something more in the words, some hidden meaning or emotion that might soften the impact. There is nothing there. No anger, no accusation, no explanation. Just distance, written plainly and without hesitation.

I should feel relieved. There is no confrontation waiting for me, no questions I am not ready to answer, no argument that might force everything into the open before I understand it myself.

But relief does not come.

Instead, something hollow opens up inside my chest, settling just beneath my ribs where the bond used to hum so steadily. It is not pain in the way I understand pain. It is emptiness, a quiet absence that feels deeper than anything sharp or immediate.

I press my hand against my chest, trying to ground myself in something physical, something real. My heartbeat is there, fast and insistent, but beneath it there is nothing else. No warmth, no connection, no sense of being tied to anything beyond myself.

Luke is gone, but it is not just him I feel the absence of.

Valois is far away too.

The realization lands slowly, but once it settles, it does not leave. He exists somewhere beyond my reach, in a world that feels distant and unreal, and yet the space he leaves behind is just as noticeable. I am caught between two absences, two distances that stretch in different directions, and I do not know which one unsettles me more.

I move through the apartment without thinking, my fingers brushing against familiar objects as if they might anchor me. Luke’s books sit untouched on the shelf. His art supplies are neatly arranged where he left them, waiting for hands that are not here to use them. The couch still carries the faint impression of where he slept last night, but even that feels like it is fading.

Everything is still.

Everything is waiting.

I sit on the bed without turning on the lights, letting the darkness settle around me until it feels almost comfortable. The silence presses in, filling the space where thoughts should be, where decisions should form. Instead, there is only that hollow feeling, spreading slowly, making it harder to ignore.

My mind drifts, circling back to something I have been avoiding since I walked through the door.

Valois.

The thought of him comes uninvited, vivid and immediate. I can hear his voice as clearly as if he were standing beside me, low and steady, carrying that quiet certainty that seems to follow him everywhere. I remember the way his presence felt, the way the bond between us opened without warning, like a door I did not know existed until it was already too late to close it.

I think about calling him.

The idea lingers longer than it should, tempting in a way that makes me uneasy. It would be so easy to reach out, to close the distance even a little, to fill the emptiness that has taken root inside me.

But I do not move.

I am not ready for whatever that choice would mean. I do not understand what is happening to me, and until I do, reaching for him feels like stepping further into something I cannot control.

I lie down slowly, staring up at the ceiling as the darkness deepens around me. Sleep does not come easily, but eventually it pulls me under, not gently, but with a strange, sudden certainty.

When I open my eyes again, I am somewhere else.

The forest stretches out around me, frozen in a way that feels absolute. The air is sharp with cold, biting against my skin, though it does not truly hurt. Snow covers the ground in an unbroken layer, crunching softly beneath my feet as I begin to walk.

The sky above is filled with stars I do not recognize.

There is no fear in me as I move forward. This place is not unfamiliar, even if I cannot explain why. I have been here before, in dreams that felt too vivid to dismiss, in moments that lingered long after I woke.

My body knows where to go.

The clearing appears ahead, exactly where I expect it to be, and he is there waiting.

Valois stands beneath the bare branches of an oak tree, his figure still against the pale expanse of snow. There is something about the way he holds himself that feels unchanged, constant in a way the rest of my world is not. His eyes find mine immediately, and though his expression does not shift much, there is a subtle softening that makes something inside me respond.

“You came,” he says, his voice carrying easily through the cold air.

“I did not mean to,” I answer, though even as I say it, I am not sure it is true.

He steps closer, and I notice that the snow does not react to him the way it does to me. There are no footprints left behind, no disturbance marking his path. It makes the distance between us feel even stranger, as though we are not fully existing in the same space.

“The bond is learning,” he says quietly. “It is reaching for you, even across distance. It will not stop.”

I wrap my arms around myself, though the cold does not truly touch me. His words do. They settle somewhere deeper, in that place that has felt empty all evening.

“What if I do not know what I want?” I ask.

He is close now, close enough that I can feel the subtle shift in the air around him, close enough that the hollow space in my chest begins to ease, just slightly, as though something is trying to reconnect.

“Then it will wait,” he says. “It has already waited longer than you can imagine.”

He lifts his hand, stopping just short of touching me. The space between his palm and my skin feels charged, filled with something I cannot see but cannot ignore either.

“But it will not stop pulling,” he continues. “And neither will I.”

The pull is there, undeniable now. It draws me forward, tempting me to close the distance, to let whatever this is take hold completely.

But I stay where I am.

I do not move, even as every part of me wants to. I hold my ground in the frozen clearing, letting the tension stretch between us, letting him wait.

When I wake, the world feels wrong again.

Cold air brushes against my skin, real this time, sharp enough to make me sit up immediately. My breath fogs in front of me as I turn toward the window and see the frost covering the glass, thick and intricate, spreading in delicate patterns that should not exist.

It is impossible. The season does not allow for this kind of cold, not here, not now.

And yet it is real.

I push myself upright, my heart racing as I take in the details of the room. Everything looks the same, but it feels different, like something has passed through it and left a trace behind.

That is when I notice the rose petal.

It rests against my pillow, white and perfect, as though it was placed there with care. I reach for it slowly, half expecting it to disappear the moment I touch it.

It does not.

The texture is soft beneath my fingers, the scent faint but unmistakable as I bring it closer. There is something familiar in it, something that ties it back to the dream, to him.

He was here.

The thought settles in with quiet certainty. Not just in the forest, not just in my sleep, but here, in this room, in the space between dreaming and waking where the rules no longer seem to apply.

My phone vibrates beside me, pulling my attention away from the petal. I hesitate before reaching for it, a sense of dread creeping in even before I see the screen.

Unknown number.

I open the message anyway.

He is watching you sleep. Do you feel safe?

The words hit harder than I expect, sending a chill through me that has nothing to do with the cold air. I look around the room instinctively, my gaze catching on the window, the door, the dark corners where shadows linger.

Then the curtain moves.

It is subtle, just a slight shift, but it is enough to make my breath catch. There is no breeze, no open window, nothing that should cause movement, and yet it happens again, a quiet ripple in the stillness.

I stare at it, waiting for something more, for some shape or figure to step out and confirm what I am starting to fear.

Nothing does.

The room remains still, the silence returning as if nothing ever disturbed it. But I know what I saw.

I look back at the phone in my hand, at the message that still glows against the dark.

Do you feel safe?

The answer forms before I can stop it.

I am not.

I have not been safe for a long time, not since the first moment everything began to change, not since the first time I felt something inside me shift in a way I could not undo.

And yet, as I lie back down, the rose petal still clutched in my hand, my eyes fixed on the curtain that may or may not move again, I realize something that unsettles me even more than the fear.

Part of me does not want safety.

The bond hums faintly in my chest, distant but present, a reminder that this is not over, that whatever is pulling at me will not let go.

He is watching.

And for reasons I do not fully understand, that thought does not terrify me as much as it should.