Updated Apr 13, 2026 • ~5 min read
Chapter 20: Before the Battle
Sage
Sage can’t sleep.
It’s three AM, five hours before they’re supposed to confront the Collector, and she’s lying in bed staring at her ceiling, thinking about all the ways tomorrow could go wrong, all the people she could lose, all the futures that might never happen.
Through the bond, she can feel Oliver is awake too—restless, worried, but also determined, hopeful in ways that Sage desperately wants to believe in.
She gets up, padding quietly to her bedroom door, and opens it to find Oliver sitting on the couch with his laptop, probably researching last-minute contingencies because they’re both compulsive that way.
“Can’t sleep either?” Oliver asks, looking up.
“No,” Sage admits, moving to sit beside him. “Too many variables. Too many things that could go wrong.”
“Or right,” Oliver suggests. “They could also go right.”
Sage looks at him—this ridiculous optimistic human who’s somehow become the center of her world in less than a month—and feels something crack in her chest.
“Oliver,” she says quietly. “Tomorrow we might die.”
“We might,” Oliver agrees, closing his laptop and giving her his full attention.
“And I—” Sage swallows hard, trying to find words for feelings she’s spent years repressing. “I don’t want to die without—I want this. With you. Before everything.”
Oliver’s expression shifts, understanding and desire and love all tangled together.
“Sage,” he says carefully. “Are you sure? You don’t have to—”
“I want to,” Sage interrupts. “Maybe it’s terrible timing. Maybe we should wait. But if tomorrow is our last day, I don’t want to regret not having this.”
Oliver reaches for her hand, lacing their fingers together. “We’re going to survive tomorrow. And then I’m taking you on a real date. And then—”
“I know,” Sage interrupts gently. “I want that too. But I also want this. Now. Tonight. Us.”
She can feel Oliver’s desire through the bond—wanting her, wanting this, but also his careful consideration, his need to make sure she’s certain.
“Are you absolutely sure?” Oliver asks. “Because once we cross this line—”
“We already crossed the line weeks ago,” Sage says. “When I let you into my shop, when you apologized with enchanted roses, when we kissed, when I bonded us magically. This isn’t crossing a line, Oliver. This is choosing what we both already want.”
Oliver looks at her for a long moment, and Sage watches the moment he decides to stop being careful, to stop protecting her from choices she’s capable of making herself.
“Okay,” he says, and his voice goes low, intimate in ways that make Sage’s breath catch. “Your bedroom or mine?”
“I don’t have a ‘mine,'” Sage points out. “You’ve been sleeping on the couch.”
“Then definitely your bedroom,” Oliver decides, standing and pulling Sage to her feet. “More comfortable.”
They move to Sage’s bedroom—the space she’s never let anyone into except Rowan, the sanctuary she’s guarded for five years—and Oliver pauses at the threshold, waiting for explicit permission.
“Come in,” Sage says, pulling him inside and closing the door.
The wards around her bedroom recognize Oliver through their bond and don’t resist his presence, and somehow that feels significant—her magic accepting him, claiming him as safe, as hers.
“I’ve never—” Sage starts, then stops because that’s not true, she’s had relationships before. “I’ve never done this with someone I actually love. It’s different.”
“Yeah,” Oliver agrees, voice soft. “It is.”
He cups her face with gentle hands, and Sage leans into the touch, into the certainty of being wanted, being chosen.
“We can go slow,” Oliver offers. “Or stop any time you—”
Sage kisses him, cutting off his careful considerateness, pouring everything she can’t say into the kiss—I love you, I trust you, I want this, I want you.
Oliver responds immediately, hands sliding into her hair, pulling her closer, and Sage feels heat build between them, desire sharpened by fear that this might be their last chance.
They move to the bed—fumbling slightly, nervous despite having fought together and bled together and bound themselves magically together—and when they finally come together it’s both desperate and tender, urgent and slow, a contradiction that somehow makes perfect sense.
Through the bond, Sage feels everything Oliver feels—his desire, his love, his wonder at being allowed this intimacy—and it’s overwhelming in the best way, being connected not just physically but magically, emotionally, completely.
“Sage,” Oliver breathes against her skin. “You’re so—”
“Don’t,” Sage interrupts, pressing her fingers to his lips. “Don’t try to describe it. Just feel it.”
So they do.
And later—much later—when they’re tangled together in sheets that smell like magic and sweat and contentment, Sage traces patterns on Oliver’s chest and lets herself feel happy, genuinely happy, for the first time in five years.
“We’re going to win tomorrow,” Oliver murmurs, half-asleep. “And then I’m taking you on that date.”
“You already took me to bed,” Sage points out. “Isn’t that usually after the date?”
“We’re doing everything backwards,” Oliver says, grinning. “Why stop now?”
Sage laughs—actually laughs, free and genuine—and Oliver’s expression goes soft with affection.
“I love hearing you laugh,” he says.
“I love you,” Sage responds, and it’s easier to say now, after this, after letting him see all of her.
“I love you too,” Oliver says, pulling her closer. “Even when you’re grumpy.”
“Especially when I’m grumpy,” Sage corrects.
“Especially,” Oliver agrees.
They fall asleep like that, wrapped around each other, the bond between them glowing with shared contentment and love and hope that tomorrow won’t be their last day after all.
When dawn comes, they wake together, and Sage feels ready—not because she’s less scared, but because whatever happens, she won’t face it alone.
Oliver is with her. Through the bond, through choice, through love.
And somehow, that makes all the difference.
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