Updated Apr 13, 2026 • ~8 min read
Chapter 17: Two Seconds
Oliver
Oliver is walking back from the supply run—just basic necessities like food and coffee because apparently even when you’re being hunted by an immortal entity you still need to eat—when the protection bond flares with sudden warning, and he has approximately two seconds to recognize danger before something slams into him from behind.
He goes down hard, concrete scraping his palms, and rolls just in time to avoid the magical blade that would have taken his head off.
The Collector sent an assassin.
Not the Collector themselves—Oliver can tell because this entity is smaller, weaker, a lesser shadow-thing that looks like smoke wearing the vague shape of a person—but deadly enough to kill a human, which Oliver very much is.
He scrambles backward, pulling out the silver knife from his pocket, and the assassin laughs—a sound like breaking glass—and advances.
“The human pet,” it hisses. “The Collector said you’d be easy.”
Oliver doesn’t waste breath on responding, just focuses on not dying, which is increasingly difficult because the assassin is fast and Oliver’s knife is designed for cutting magical bonds, not combat.
The assassin strikes again—magical blade manifesting from nothing—and Oliver barely blocks with his knife, the impact sending shocks up his arm.
Through the bond, he can feel Sage’s sudden panic, can feel her running, can feel her terror for him, and Oliver knows she’s going to do something reckless to save him.
He needs to survive until she gets here.
The assassin doesn’t give him time to plan, just keeps attacking with relentless efficiency, and Oliver is bleeding now—shallow cuts on his arms, a deeper gash across his ribs—and he knows he’s outmatched.
“The Collector wants you afraid,” the assassin says, driving Oliver back against a wall. “Wants your witch to know you’re dying. Makes her power taste better when she’s consumed.”
“Tell the Collector,” Oliver gasps, “that they can go fuck themselves.”
The assassin strikes—blade aimed for Oliver’s heart—and Oliver knows he can’t block this one, knows this is it, and then—
Sage arrives.
Oliver feels her through the bond before he sees her—fury like wildfire, terror transmuted into rage, power unleashed without restraint—and then she’s there, materializing between Oliver and the assassin with magic crackling around her like lightning.
“Get away from him,” Sage snarls, and her voice doesn’t sound entirely human.
The assassin tries to attack her, and Sage destroys it.
Not binds it, not banishes it—destroys it, tears it apart with raw power that makes Oliver’s ears ring, reduces it to nothing in seconds, and the violence of it is terrifying and beautiful and Oliver has never seen Sage this uncontrolled.
When the assassin is gone, Sage turns to Oliver, and her eyes are wild, magic still sparking around her hands.
“You’re hurt,” she says, and her voice shakes. “You’re bleeding.”
“I’m okay,” Oliver tries to say, but then the adrenaline wears off and the pain hits properly, and he slides down the wall with a gasp.
The cut across his ribs is bad—deeper than he thought, bleeding more than it should—and Sage makes a sound that might be a sob or might be fury and drops to her knees beside him.
“Don’t you dare,” she says, hands hovering over his wound like she’s afraid to touch him. “Don’t you dare die on me, Oliver Reyes.”
“Not planning on it,” Oliver manages, trying to smile and probably failing.
Sage’s hands settle on the wound, and Oliver feels her magic flowing into him—healing energy, warm and powerful, and he knows instinctively that she’s using her own life force to heal him, which is dangerous, which is exactly what he told her not to do when they discussed magical healing.
“Sage, stop,” he says weakly. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“Shut up,” Sage commands, and her magic intensifies, knitting flesh and stanching blood, and Oliver can feel through the bond how terrified she is, how she’s not going to stop until he’s healed regardless of the cost to herself.
The healing hurts—not as much as the wound, but a different kind of pain, like being rewritten from the inside—and Oliver grits his teeth and lets Sage work, and after what feels like hours but is probably only minutes, the pain fades to a dull ache.
“There,” Sage says, pulling her hands back, and she’s pale, shaking, clearly exhausted from the magical expenditure. “You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.”
“Sage—” Oliver starts, reaching for her.
“Don’t ever do that again!” Sage shouts, and she’s crying now, tears streaming down her face. “Don’t get hurt, don’t almost die, don’t make me feel you dying through the bond!”
“I didn’t exactly plan for an assassin to attack me,” Oliver points out, but he’s pulling Sage into his arms because she’s shaking and crying and he’s never seen her this emotionally raw.
“Of course I fucking care, you idiot!” Sage sobs into his shirt, and it takes Oliver a moment to realize she’s responding to something he didn’t say out loud.
Oh. The bond. She felt his thought through the connection: Sage cares about me.
“You could have died,” Sage continues, voice muffled against his chest. “I felt you in danger, I felt your pain, I felt you thinking this might be it, and I can’t—I can’t lose you too, Oliver. I can’t.”
“You won’t,” Oliver promises, even though he knows he can’t actually guarantee that. “I’m right here. I’m okay.”
“Because I healed you,” Sage says, pulling back to glare at him through tears. “Because I got there in time. What if I hadn’t? What if the Collector sends something worse next time? What if you die because I dragged you into this?”
“Then it’s my choice,” Oliver says firmly, cupping her face with hands that are still shaking slightly from blood loss and terror. “I chose to help. I chose to stay. I chose to bind myself to you magically. Stop trying to take responsibility for my decisions.”
“Your decisions are going to get you killed,” Sage argues.
“Maybe,” Oliver agrees. “But they’re still mine. And I’m not leaving, Sage. The Collector can send a hundred assassins and I’m still not leaving you.”
Sage stares at him, emotions warring across her face, and through the bond Oliver feels her fear and love and desperation tangled together.
“Why?” she asks, voice breaking. “Why do you care this much about someone as broken as me?”
“You’re not broken,” Oliver says, and he means it with everything he has. “You’re surviving. There’s a difference.”
“I almost lost you,” Sage whispers.
“But you didn’t,” Oliver says. “You saved me. Very dramatically, I might add. That was some impressive destructive magic.”
“I wasn’t thinking,” Sage admits. “I just felt you in danger and I reacted.”
“The bond worked,” Oliver points out. “You knew I needed help and you came. That’s what it’s for.”
Sage is quiet for a long moment, and then she does something that takes Oliver completely by surprise—she kisses him.
It’s desperate, fierce, tasting like salt from her tears and fear transmuted into need, and Oliver kisses back with equal intensity because he almost died and Sage is here and alive and choosing him despite all her walls.
When they break apart, both breathing hard, Sage rests her forehead against his.
“I love you,” she says, and through the bond Oliver feels her terror at the admission mixed with certainty. “I love you and it’s terrifying and terrible timing and I shouldn’t feel this way about someone I’ve known for three weeks but I do.”
Oliver’s heart feels too big for his chest. “Sage—”
“Don’t say it back,” Sage interrupts. “Not because I don’t want to hear it, but because I felt it through the bond and hearing it out loud might actually kill me.”
Oliver laughs despite everything—the pain, the fear, the exhaustion—and pulls Sage closer.
“Okay,” he agrees. “But when this is over—”
“When this is over, you can say it,” Sage allows. “If we survive.”
“When we survive,” Oliver corrects, stubborn optimism intact despite recent evidence that survival is not guaranteed.
Morgan finds them twenty minutes later, still sitting on the sidewalk holding each other, and takes one look at Oliver’s blood-soaked shirt and Sage’s tear-stained face before sighing.
“You two are a disaster,” she observes. “Come on. Let’s get you both back to the apartment before another assassin shows up.”
They make it back to Thornwood Occult, and while Sage reinforces the wards—paranoid now about protecting Oliver—Morgan pulls Oliver aside.
“She loves you,” Morgan says, and it’s not a question.
“I know,” Oliver confirms.
“If you hurt her—”
“I won’t,” Oliver interrupts. “But if I do, you’ll have to get in line behind Sage to curse me. She’s terrifying when she’s protective.”
Morgan smiles slightly. “Yeah. She is. It’s one of her best qualities.”
They watch Sage work, and Oliver can feel through the bond that she’s still scared, still processing almost losing him, still adjusting to having admitted her feelings out loud.
But she loves him. She said it. And Oliver is going to make damn sure they both survive long enough for him to say it back properly.
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