“You’ll take my corruption with you.” Understanding crashed over me. “Save me by destroying yourself.”
“Not destroying. Transforming.” She smiled through her tears. “I won’t be gone, Kaelren. Not really. I’ll be everywhere. In every moment we should have had, every timeline we could have lived. The bond won’t break—it’ll stretch across time itself.”
“That’s not good enough.” My voice was wrecked, broken. “I need you here. Solid. Real. Not scattered across every possible moment.”
“I know.” She pressed her forehead to mine. “But someone has to break the pattern. Someone has to try the impossible thing. And I’d rather it be me, choosing this, than another Elle forced into it blind.”
There was no arguing with that logic. No way to fight against the terrible righteousness of her sacrifice.
So I stopped trying to convince her and just held her instead.
“One more minute,” I said, my hands sliding to her waist, pulling her against me. “Just give me one more minute where you’re mine and I’m yours and the world can burn for all I care.”
“One more minute,” she agreed, her arms wrapping around my neck.
I kissed her like she was oxygen and I was drowning. Like she was the answer to every question I’d ever asked. Like she was the only thing in the universe that mattered.
She kissed me back with equal desperation, equal fervor, pouring everything she couldn’t say into the press of her lips against mine. Our marks sang where we touched, Root and corruption harmonizing in ways that shouldn’t be possible, creating music that made reality ripple.
When we finally broke apart, both breathing hard, neither of us could speak for a moment.
“I love you,” I finally managed, the words inadequate but necessary. “More than I’ve ever loved anything. More than I thought I was capable of loving. You are the best thing that has ever happened to me, Elle Hawthorne. The only good thing in years of darkness. The only thing that ever made me want to be something other than a monster.”
Tears streamed down her face, catching light from the still-glowing apparatus behind us. “I love you, too. So much it terrifies me. So much I’m willing to scatter myself across eternity just to save you. You’re worth it,Kaelren. You’re worth everything.”
“Come back to me.” Not a question. A command. A plea wrapped in certainty because I couldn’t survive any other outcome.
“I’ll try.” She touched my chest, right over my heart. “I’ll try so hard. But Kael—”
“Don’t.” I covered her hand with mine. “Don’t tell me you might not be you when you come back. Don’t tell me the timelines might change you. I don’t care. Whatever you become, wherever you end up, I’ll find you. And if you can’t find your way back, I’ll come looking. I’ll tear apart every moment between us until I find you.”
She smiled through her tears. “My anchor. My lighthouse.”
“Always.”
She pulled back slowly, reluctantly, each inch of distance feeling like tearing away pieces of my soul.
“I have to do this now,” she said, looking at the seed in her palm. “Before I lose my nerve. Before the convergence collapses completely.”
“Elle—”
“Be my lighthouse, Kaelren.” Her voice was steady now, resolved. “When I’m lost in all those moments, all those timelines, you’ll be what guides me home. Our bond. This love. It’ll be the thread I follow back.”
“I’ll be waiting,” I said, though my throat felt like it was closing. “However long it takes. However many years or lifetimes or eternities. I’ll be here.”
She looked at me one more time, memorizing my face the way I was memorizing hers. Then she turned to face the center of the chamber, holding the seed against her chest.
“This is it,” Peeble said quietly from my shoulder. “This is the variable that’s never been tried. Root and rot, coexisting. It’ll either break the cycle or destroy everything. No middle ground.”
“Encouraging,” I muttered.
“I’m the echo of someone who failed,” Peeble replied. “Encouragement isn’t really my specialty anymore.”
Elle closed her eyes, and I felt her reaching through our bond. Not gently,but with purpose and power. She was pulling at my corruption, drawing it toward her through the connection that tied us together.
I should have resisted. Should have fought to keep the darkness that was killing me.
But I didn’t. I let her take it, let her pull the rot through our bond like poison from a wound, because if this was what she needed to break the pattern, I’d give her anything.
