“Wait a moment.” I hold my hand up, showing her our gray, fraying thread. “How did this happen, then?”
Jyn is unable to look me in the eye.
“Jyn.”
She shakes her head. “We should… we should keep going. The village is near.”
“No,” I say firmly, holding on to her hand as tight as I dare. “Why is our thread gray, Jyn? You’ve avoided my questions for weeks. Tell menow.”
Her silence tells me everything, but I say it aloud anyway.
“You tried to kill me?”
The words come out tight and broken; I’m blinded by the tears welling in my eyes. This cannot be. None of it makes sense. The bitterness of betrayal weighs heavily on my tongue.
Our thread slowly begins to drain of its color, its crimson hue seeping away like blood in a stream. It unravels between us, the progress we’ve made eroding before our very eyes.
“Why?”I whisper, so quiet and pathetic that my own ears almost miss the question.
“Please, just—” She tries to push past me. I don’t budge.
“Say something!” I roar, grasping her by the shoulders. “Tell me, Jyn. Why would you do it?”
“I lost my mind!” she yells, regret in her eyes. “You don’t understand, Sai. You have known the pain of death, but I have known the pain of losing you hundreds of times over. How many times could you lose your lover without going mad?”
I pause. I don’t know how I could’ve handled it even once. “How many times have I been reborn?”
“This is theseven hundredth time,” she whispers. “I have counted every single time I’ve felt our connection rekindle. It finally broke me. Twenty years ago, I set out to find you. I was overcome with grief. You were a boy, no older than five. I found you playing by the river.”
I rack my brain, trying and failing to recall our encounter. Perhaps I was too young to remember. I always thought my tumble into the water that day was an accident, but her confession shines a horrible new light on the reality.
Jyn’s whole body shakes with her sobs. “I just wanted it to end. I knew you were going to meet another tragic demise anyway, so I thought—”
“You thought to murder me,” I say in disbelief.
“It wasmercy,” she insists. “It was meant to be a mercy. I… I pushed you. Held you under the water.”
I take a step away, disgusted and frightened. I remember what she told me when we were both trapped underground, the conversation we had mere moments after I killed that cannibal.
It was a mercy.
Do you really think his Fated One would want to see him like that?
“How could you?” I breathe heavily.
“I regretted it in an instant,” she says, desperately grasping at my robes to keep me close. “I couldn’t bear to watch you struggle. I pulled you out before it was too late, but the damage to our bond was done. It turned gray and the thread started to fall apart, but it didn’t break because I… couldn’t go through with it.”
“You couldn’t go through withmurdering me?”
I take another step back, staring at her, aghast. I’m not sure how I’m even supposed to react to this. Lash out in anger? Break down in tears?
Instead, I am completely numb.
“Please, say something, Sai,” Jyn whimpers.
“What is there to say?”
“I’m so sorry, my love. I am so sorry.”
