NEW MESSAGE
I fumble as I try to bring it up, my finger suddenly huge and unwieldy, my lungs tightening as if someone has their arms too tight around me.Please, I beg it silently.Please don’t be a glitch. Please, please be real.
Even if it’s just some momentary, miraculous millisecond of reception, a chance for just one message to download, it’ll be a glimpse of my old life that I suddenly, desperately need. It’ll be just a fraction of a second of normalcy. It’ll be a link to a place I miss with all my heart and soul.
My eyes are hot with tears as I pull the thing up, the message projecting above my chrono in the luminous green letters I’m so accustomed to.
MESSAGE: RENDEZVOUS MEET RESCUE PARTY. LOCATION INDICATED.
There’s a map sketched out beneath the two lines of text, and it’s easy enough to make out the main features—the canyon and river we’ve been following, the forest, the temple back in the city, and the road in between. Farther east, there’s a flashing X that indicates my rendezvous point. All I have to do is follow the river to get there.
My head’s spinning, questions elbowing each other aside in a wrestling match. How did my people get down here safely? How are they going to get back up? How do they know this place well enough to draw this map? How did they know that I’m even stillalive?
“North?” Nimh’s voice is taut with urgency—she’s watching my face, and I realize I haven’t spoken.
“It’s a message from a rescue party,” I blurt, keeping my eyes on the map instead of her face. “They’re ready to meet me, to take me back.”
There’s pain at the thought of leaving Nimh behind. After everything we’ve been through, parting like this feels wrong in every way.
ButthisNimh, wreathed in deadly mist—I don’t know who she is. If I can stop her from harming Alciel, then I have no choice—maybe leaving will be enough, taking away part of her prophecy. If not, then my people will need to defend themselves, and only I can warn them.
“Back?” Her face is stricken, desperate. “No, we have work to do. We must do this together, North.”
“Wearen’t doing anything,” I tell her, taking a step back. “I won’t help you destroy either of our worlds.”I’m sorry, I want to say, but I’m not—I can’t be. Not now.
“But …” She takes a step forward, lifting one hand, the mist rising and stretching toward me as if in echo. “Our destiny—”
“I don’t believe in destiny!” I snap. “None of this isreal, Nimh! Whatever messages our ancestors left you, they’ve been twisted, changed over the centuries. No sane person wants to kill everything in existence. It’s not right. It’s notreal.”
The words hang between us, her face as wounded as if I’d slapped her.
“You cannot mean that,” she whispers. Mist gathers around her, flickering along with the rise and fall of her chest as she breathes. “Not after everything you’ve seen.”
“I’ll do whatever it takes to stop you from doing this. How can you think I’d do anything else?”
The silence stretches out between us as our eyes meet, and she’s the one to break it.
“You say none of this is real. But if you will go, I must tell you now. You are,North. You are real. The pull I feel toward you, the way my heart wants to reach for you—those are real.”
My breath stops. I twist my fingers together, fighting against the compulsion to respond—because now she’s speaking the way she used to. Not as a goddess, but as the girl who made me want to tie a red sash around my waist just to wear her colors, who asked me what it felt like to be kissed.
She must see the warring desires in my face, because she steps closer, eyes searching mine. “Are you going to pretend that’s madness too?” she says softly. “Will you tell me you haven’t been watching me, as I’ve been watching you? That what you told me as we climbed this cliff, that you and Iweredestiny, was a lie? That you don’t …” For the first time since she woke from her daze, she hesitates, biting at her lip. “That you don’t feel as I do?”
She doesn’t drop her eyes or look away. She’s offering up her heart, along with her faith, and as the sun breaks through the spindly trees and traces across the curves of her face, across her lips, lingering in the moisture on her eyelashes … I want to take what she’s offering.
“Of course not,” I whisper, reaching out with one hand. When we met, she would have flinched away in terror of being touched—now, she waits, trusting, eyes never leaving my face as my fingers trace the curve of her cheek a breath away from her skin. I can feel the warmth of her in the cool morning air. “Of course that part’s real.”
She lifts her hand as well, and I bring mine even with hers, hovering so very close to it. “Thenstaywith me,” she pleads. “We will send a message to your people and tell them that you are safe.”
I linger in the moment, feeling the air singing between us. Yesterday, these words would have lit my heart with fire—yesterday, I would have said yes.
Yesterday, I didn’t know she wanted to destroy the world.
I take a step back, withdrawing, feeling the cold against my fingertips as I let my hand fall. “I can’t,” I croak.
Color rises to her face, her full eyes snapping with sudden hurt and a tiny, unvoiced question. My own chest aches as if I’d wounded myself when I wounded her. I curl my hands into fists.
When her silent appeal gets no answer, her expression grows chilly, remote.
