He knew it would be insane to step into the fire to reach her.
But he also knew that he must. He could not explain how he knew it. It went against every bit of logic and reason that he possessed. It went against his instincts, his most primal fears. It was a great leap into the unknown.
Leo made the leap.
He felt a blaze of heat. Fear clutched at his heart as he doubted his decision. Could he have been wrong? Had he gone this far to fail at the final test?
And then there was nothing. An inky black void, a space between worlds.
Silence.
Above him, a thousand million stars. They spread across the sky, shooting like meteors, exploding like fireworks, filling the darkness with their twinkling light, surrounding him.
He spun around to look at them all. How could there be so many? He felt the infinite vastness of it. He was adrift in a sea of stars, tiny and alone.
But he wasn’t alone.
Ceri was there. The stars had come together and made her. She burnt with their fire. He could see them flicker in her movements, could see the trails of them spinning as she reached out for him.
He took her hand.
She pulled, and he followed. She pulled him closer to her, moving galaxies in her wake. She held his face. He could see a nebula reflected in her blue eyes, worlds being born and collapsing into dust over and over in an endless cycle.
She kissed him, and the worlds collided.
He felt the same lurch as before, but forward, not back. He fell with her through the darkness, tumbling and turning, on and on and on, and then in the final moments, drifting like the floating of a feather onto the ground.
When he opened his eyes, he was home.
Chapter Thirty-One
JOURNEY’S END
Ceri
Ceri opened her eyes on the ground, feeling that same sense of falling into the sky that she’d felt weeks before on the blanket next to Leo.
Next to her, he grabbed her hand, pulling her back down to solid ground.
They had done it. He was here.
She kissed him. It was filled with more than the weeks that had been between them, between the first moment under the stars and this one. It was a kiss that spanned centuries, millennia. It was the ecstasy of one hundred lifetimes in a moment.
“It’s nice to see you too,” said Leo when they parted.
Ceri shoved him playfully as he laughed.
He pulled her to her feet and kissed her again. This time, he wasn’t laughing. As he pulled away from her, he whispered in her ear, “Thank you.”
“Leo!” shouted Professor Marin from the other side of the bonfire. She ran to him and embraced him warmly, kissing each of his cheeks in the continental style. “You absolute imbecile. I’m so happy to have you back.”
Ceri stepped back to give Leo room to accommodate all the hugs, well wishes, and mockery he had coming to him.
And then someone screamed.
“Oh Gods, what is that thing?”
The bonfire crowd split in two: those that ran towards danger, and those that ran from it.
