“Me too.”
“Good. Let’s be scared together.”
The Chronicle floats between us, glowing so bright it hurts to look at. Pages turn on their own, faster and faster, until the words blur into pure light.
We don’t need them anyway. We know what to do.
Our hands meet, palm to palm, and the synchronization is instant. Not because we’ve practiced, but because we know each other now. I breathe, he breathes with me. Our hearts find their rhythm without trying.
“Stage one,” we say in unison, and laugh because we didn’t plan that.
The magic builds around us, but something’s different. The air shimmers, and suddenly...
Doorways. Made of ice and shadow, they form around us in a circle. Through each one, I can see a different future.
“What...” I start.
“The ceremony,” Stenrik says, voice tight. “It’s showing us alternatives.”
The first door shows me back with Martin. We’re in Aspen after all, and he’s apologizing, promising to change. I look comfortable. Safe. Miserable.
“That’s one option,” the magic whispers through both of us.
I feel it immediately: a pull toward that door, gentle at first, then stronger. My feet slide half a step toward it without my permission.
“Rianne?” Stenrik’s voice is strained.
The second door shows Stenrik alone at Henderson’s statue, three hundred more years of solitude stretching before him. No complications. No chaos. No warmth.
“Another option,” the magic says.
Now he’s being pulled too. I can see him leaning toward his door, his feet sliding slightly on the library floor.
More doors appear. Me at the library, normal and opaque but alone. Stenrik in his realm, powerful but frozen. Separate futures, uncomplicated by permanent bonds or transformation or each other.
“These are escape routes,” I realize, fighting the pull. “We can choose these instead.”
“Easier paths,” Stenrik agrees, his voice tight with effort.
Through the door with Martin, I hear him saying, “Come on, Rianne. You know we work. Three years can’t be thrown away for three days with a stranger.”
My hand tightens on Stenrik’s, but I’m still sliding toward the door. “He’s not wrong. Three years versus three days.”
“Four days,” Stenrik corrects, but he’s being pulled toward his own door now, and only our clasped hands are keeping us together.
Through his door, I see the simplicity of solitude. No one to worry about. No one to potentially lose. No permanent bonds that might hurt.
“It would be simpler,” he admits, fighting the pull.
“Much simpler.”
We stand there, surrounded by escape routes, hands clasped, both see-through as ghosts. The magic waits. The doors pull harder, and we’re being dragged in opposite directions. Our fingers start to slip.
The door with Martin shifts, showing more. Sunday mornings where he watches sports while I read alone. Date nights that are really his work events. The slow erosion of self that I’d been accepting as normal.
“That’s not love,” I say quietly, planting my feet harder. “That’s habit.”
Stenrik’s door shows more too. Centuries of perfect control, no chaos, no warmth, no me there, making terrible jokes or racing library carts or drinking awful wine.
