Elloven’s hesitation ended with Jesstin’s dawning outrage. A spray of dazzling, garish light exploded upward from the brackish water and into a force answering to her alone.
Chest full and shoulders hunched, Elloven called upon the chaos, and the chaos answered. In her charged palms was a tempest of her own doing, bursting with precision and clear intention. It was a weapon with no equal, and one finally hers to brandish.
The turbulence churned in impatience, for the first time waiting not for her panic but her order.
With a violent fling of her arms, she sent it hurtling toward a stunned Fabrien.
He went sprawling into a tree, his arms and legs flailing. Light and chain tumbled through the dusk as Jesstin’s sacred flame flew from his fist. If it landed in the swamp, they’d never find it, and Jesstin could not, could not, become like Fabrien. She commanded the water to rise once more, and it caught the diadem atop a geyser. She reached for it and placed it carefully in her pocket. Her next breath gathered the remainder of her courage, and she turned to finish what she’d started.
Elloven marched fearlessly through the muck toward her cowering ex-husband, who was still nursing his confusion. “I’m going to show you how it feels to have something precious stolen from you. The last words you’ll ever comprehend are these: this is mine now, and you will never, ever get this back.” She ripped the vessel where his flame should be and crushed it inside her fist with a wailing scream stitched from every horrible, unconscionable act Fabrien Quinlanden had wrought upon her. Blood seeped from her palm as she watched the scattered pieces of him fade and warp. Her cries reverberated even after she’d stopped, and the power, the sound, was coming from her palm, where Fabrien’s flame had exploded. Some shards fell into the swamp and disappeared. Others clung to the blood on her hand like broken glass. She shook them away and wiped them on her trousers. When he looked her way, there was no recognition in his empty eyes. He didn’t even know who she was anymore.
Jesstin. Elloven thrashed in the viscous water, searching for where he’d gone down, but he wasn’t there anymore, and now it would be too late. She’d prioritized vengeance over his life. She bent and screamed his name over and over, screamed it until her throat could only squeak.
Then the swamp was gone.
Nothing replaced it, only another endless void.
Elloven dropped to her knees and sobbed.
But then he was there. Jesstin was there. She couldn’t see him, but she felt him near. He’d come with her into the dark nothing, and she crawled toward him, crying in utter relief to find he was still the same man. She latched his flame around his neck before he could become something unthinkable. He looked down at the flame, up at her. His hand traveled to her face and whimpered in anguish when it connected.
With his flame secure, its light bold and strong, she could see he, too, was crying.
“He’s gone.” Jesstin brushed his thumb along her cheekbone. “I will be soon too.”
“No, no. You have to fight it. No, you can’t let it happen. Stay with me. Please stay.”
“I have to end this.”
“Please, Jess, no—” Her objections ended abruptly.
He was no longer there to hear them.
Jesstin was back on the crimson mountaintop. The three doors were back, but the stripes were still.
Rosy snowflakes liquefied on the backs of his hands. Icy wind pinched his airways. He hadn’t noticed the thinning air before, but his lungs felt the extra effort now.
The Conductor emerged without its hat or cane. “You disrespect my rules, I make new ones. There’s no end to my patience. Yours? How many living years will you give this place before you’ve given too much?” Its hair had always been frightful but in an intentional way, not like it was now, breaking free of its pins.
“As many as it takes, bitch.” He was still reeling from the transitions yet ready for another at any moment. “What are years to someone like me?”
“And her?”
The doors winked away. Something round appeared in the air, as small as an apple, its edges rippling. Blurry details formed within its uneven sphere as it expanded. Jesstin couldn’t make out what was happening in front of him, but he couldn’t deny what he was looking at. He felt the Conductor’s eyes boring him with gleeful anticipation.
The crowd came together first, then the makings of a scaffold in the distance. The vendors, the wagons—all were there to capitalize on the gruesome entertainment ahead. He knew some of them, had done business with them. Others he’d once called friends.
Jesstin knew the place, but it was not until he saw Elloven running through the crowd when he knew the day.
“Swing, swing, swing!” chanted the crowd, with an energy one expected at a sporting match, not an execution.
“This is where she died, where she really died.” The Conductor’s breathy, moist whisper near his ear sent him to the tips of his toes. “Where you killed her. You authored her death the moment you invited her to the village.”
“Swing, swing, swing. You killed her.”
The Conductor was a trickster, a demon, but it was not wrong. He could have fought Elloven harder when she’d cosigned the bond to free him. He’d protested, yes, but he hadn’t stopped it, because no amount of lying to himself could overshadow the fear of dying having never truly lived.
“I can take us back. You can do it all different this time. We’re already there.” The Conductor’s hat and cane returned. Its charming mien was fully restored. The dazzling host was back. “You can refuse her help, tell her you never wanted it, never wanted her. Send her home, to the woman parading as her mother. She need never travel to Rivenholde, as there will be no bond to break. Her cousin’s hired swords need never find her.”
