But Elodie wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at the clearing, she could see it in her mind’s eye, that patch of forest where lightning had torn a hole in the world, and she knew, with bone-deep certainty, that if she went there now, if she held this necklace when the storm peaked?—
The portal would open.
She could go home.
“A choice isn’t real until it costs you something,” the old woman said. Her strange eyes were kind now, almost gentle. “You said you chose him. But saying and doing are different things, aren’t they? Words are easy. Walking away from everything you knew—that’s harder.”
The necklace burned in her hands. The storm screamed overhead. And for one terrible moment, Elodie understood what this was. A test.
Not of her love, she knew she loved him. Not of her commitment, she’d already declared it. But of hercertainty. The universe was asking … Are you sure? Really sure? Here’s the door. Here’s your way back. What do you choose when the choice is real?
She looked at Gareth, still fighting toward her through the chaos. At his scarred face and desperate eyes. At the man who had offered to help her leave if that’s what she wanted. Who had loved her enough to let her go.
She looked at the necklace. And she ran through the courtyard, through the gates. The clearing was alive with lightning.
Elodie burst through the treeline into a maelstrom of wind and rain and raw, crackling power. The storm had centered itselfhere, directly above the spot where she’d first arrived, as if the magic had been waiting all this time, gathering strength for this moment.
The trees were skeletal now, stripped bare, their black branches clawing at the churning sky. Dead leaves whipped through the air like a thousand grasping hands. Thunder rolled overhead, so loud it vibrated in her chest. Rain slashed at her face, blinding her. She stumbled forward, one hand raised to shield her eyes, the other clutching the necklace against her heart.
The opals were screaming, she could feel it, a high keening vibration that resonated in her bones. The emeralds pulsed in counterpoint, steady as a heartbeat. The gold setting burned against her palm, but she couldn’t let go.
She tripped on a root, classic Elodie, and her knee split open on a rock. Blood welled, hot and red, dripping onto the ancient metal.
Storm. Blood. Choice.
The world shimmered.
A door opened in the air before her, a shimmer like heat haze, a distortion that shouldn’t exist, and through it, she saw another world. Her own time.
Lady Baldridge’s garden. But different now. The fairy lights were gone, the maypole dismantled. It was autumn there too. The roses had faded, the hedges had gone brown at the edges. She could see the stone manor in the background, windows glowing against the dusk.
Elodie stared at the portal. At the life she’d left behind, and at everything she’d thought she wanted, once upon a time.
And she felt... nothing. No longing. No regret. No desperate pull toward the world she’d lost. Just clarity. Crystal clear, bone-deep certainty.
She’d already made her choice. Had made it in Alaric’s dungeon, when she’d promised herself she’d stop being afraid. She’d made it in the courtyard at Dunharrow when she’d saidI love youand meant it.
“ELODIE!”
She turned.
Gareth stood at the edge of the clearing, soaked to the skin, his dark hair plastered to his face. He must have followed her—run through the forest like a madman, heedless of the lightning crashing around him.
His eyes were wild. Not for himself, she realized that with sudden, devastating clarity, but for her. Always for her.
He touched his throat, tried to speak, then shook his head.
Don’t.His hands moved desperately through the rain.Please. Don’t go.
She smiled.
It wasn’t a sad smile, or a conflicted one, or the smile of a woman being torn in two. It was the smile of someone who knew exactly what she wanted.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said as she pulled off the opal ring Gareth had given her, somehow knowing it belonged with the necklace. With a deep shuddering breath, she threw the ring and necklace into the portal.
Not with anguish or tears. But with the same matter-of-fact certainty she’d use to throw out old rubbish.This doesn’t belong to me anymore. This isn’t my path.
The necklace and ring flew true, fire opals trailing light like a comet’s tail. They struck the portal at its center and sank into the shimmer like a stone dropped into still water.
