Then she seeks out the others, my unit, my brothers in so much more than blood.
“Sai,” she says softly, “it didn’t happen.”
He lets out a horrible, choking sound. “But I thought about it, that’s enough. Just imagining you there…” His fist slams into the ground, rupturing it. “What I might’ve done to you… what I’ve done to others—”
He can’t look at her.
Neither can Julien.
“I remember it so vividly,” he murmurs, lost. “Like it would be nothing.” The realm shakes. “Like you were nothing.” The ruptures widen. “My fingers touched your throat—” He stares at his hand in horror.
“Listen to me,” Jasmine commands, rising to her feet.
The darkness wraps her like a mantle, settling over her shoulders as if it were woven for her, flowing down her back in trailing folds that stitch together the cracks we’ve formed in the ground.
We remain on our knees, staring up at her.
“I do not blame you,” she begins. “You made the right choice.”
Sai shakes his head. “That doesn’t—”
“No.”Her word slices through his protest with a wisp of shadow. “You don’t get to argue with me about this. Not for what you thought. Not for what you almost did. Not even for what youdid do.” Her gaze pins each of us in turn, her crimson stare the only light. “You made choices based on what you knew, and you made the right ones.”
I hear her words, see her, but I can’t accept them. Not one of us can. And she feels it.
Her expression softens into defeat. “Do my words meannothingto you?” The hurt in her tone is unbearable.
“They mean everything,” Julien rasps, gaze intent on her. Always on her. “But we do not deserve them.”
“I’ll decide what you deserve,” she snarls as shadows burst around her frame, the red of her eyes a glowing fire.
Then she stills, takes in our faces and slowly inhales.
“Whatever came before, every choice... it led us here, to this moment. And I would never change that.” Her gaze burns into mine, into all of us, daring us to challenge her. “You don’t have to believe in yourselves. But believe in this: my words. Me.”
We truly do not deserve her.
But she is right. Everything has led us to this moment. Here, right now. She is here, and she’s ours.
We arebonded.
And we will never,ever, lose her again.
“All this time…” Kane’s voice is the smallest I’ve ever heard it, and when he finally lifts his gaze to Jasmine’s, something in him cracks. I see it in his face, hear it in his voice. “We’ve been bonded all this time.”
Jasmine searches his expression warily, uncertain how to handle this version of my brother, then nods.
A soft sound shudders out of him before his eyes find mine. And I know that look. I’velivedthat look.
As children, when the Dark Realm crumbled around us, he stood so still on the very edge, waiting for it to consume him. That was when he turned and gave me that look.
He reached into my mind, told me to leave him behind. Let him rot away in the realm like our father. Because that’s what he believed he deserved, because he believes he’s a monster like him.
A mistake. A creature born from hatred, greed and destruction.
Instead, I reached for him, dragged him into the light with me, and never let him go.
When Kane stands, so do we.
