Jesstin smiled sadly. “I’m happy to see you two together.” He nodded to himself. “You don’t have to live for me. I’ll be fine. I promise.”
He would not be fine. He was not fine now. But Jesstin was only half the reason Sesto was resolved to go. Saying aloud how dearly he missed Rhiain and the rest of the family would only deepen Jesstin’s wound, but Sesto ached for them every single day. “It’s already decided,” Sesto said. “There’ll be plenty of nights to share stories, but you’re exhausted. I’m afraid we gave our only other bed to Elloven. If you don’t mind sharing with Daire, I’ll make up a space for myself on the sofa.”
Jesstin shoved back from the table. “You go back to sleep. I think I might take a walk.”
“Now? Right now?” Daire asked.
“Why not?” Jesstin stood. “If Elloven wakes before I’m back, let her know we’ll set out for her mother’s tomorrow. Assuming she feels up to travel.”
“Exactly how long do you intend to be gone?” Sesto crossed his arms and stayed defiantly seated.
“I see age hasn’t made you any less dramatic. The consistency is nice.” Jesstin’s grin was subtle. “I need to breathe the air for a while and remember who I am, especially now that everyone else has forgotten.”
“Not everyone else,” Daire said softly. “Not a day has passed that Sesto hasn’t spoken your name.”
Sesto flushed in discomfiture. It was true, and he wasn’t embarrassed by it, but nor did he know how to explain the depth of loss he’d felt for three decades.
Jesstin pulled Sesto to his feet and embraced him. He ran his hands along his smooth head and kissed it. “My brother.” He smiled at Daire, who lit up like the sun. “Brothers. More like grandfathers now, though, old dogs that you are.”
Sesto snorted. “Pray you look as good as us in your sixties.”
“If I even live that long. Go back to bed. We’ll talk more later.” Jesstin left the room but was back right away. “Ah, where’s that fucking door?”
“The one you came through?” Daire asked.
Jesstin gesticulated at the blank wall, bewildered.
“We never saw it. It was gone when we found you here. For us, it’s always been a wall.” Daire pointed at the arch, beyond which was their front door.
“And now it will stay that way,” Jesstin said and left.
Elloven was dreaming, endlessly. Some pieces felt so indelibly real, like saving Jesstin from Fabrien... destroying Fabrien. The rest were distorted images revealed by fractal light. Tumbling, turning, tunneling through a space between worlds...
But then she woke up. She woke up and all of that disintegrated, and the world became real again. When she tried to move, though, she couldn’t.
Her limbs were as stiff as tree trunks. And why was she so cold? When she felt the panic creep in, she reminded herself there was no reason this couldn’t be a dream—or a continuation of her death or something other than the frightening prospect of being trapped in her own body.
Move, I’m telling you to move, she repeated in her head, but no part of her responded.
A sound from her left startled her enough that she managed to turn her head, though just barely. But now she was concerned for her vision because she couldn’t possibly be seeing what she was seeing, lying in a bed on the other side of the room.
It was an old man who resembled what she imagined Taven’s father, or even grandfather, would look like. But when he opened his eyes, she understood everything the moment required of her.
She was back in the living world and in her old body, the one she’d died in—alive, or something like it. The man was Taven, though remarkably older. And just as she was slowly filling with life, his was leaving him. She could smell it.
“Ellie.” The word warbled from the back of his mottled throat. His eyes, milky from age or illness, didn’t even close all the way when he blinked. “I waited for you.”
With a shaking hand that wouldn’t bend, she peeled back only about an inch of quilt before she gave up. “Taven.” Several difficult moments passed before she found the energy to speak again. “I can see it’s you, but...”
“Thirty-two years, it’s been. Or thirty-three? Time slips away.” He smiled against his pillow. How frail he looked. If what he’d said was accurate, he’d be approaching seventy, which should be impossible. He looked even older. “If this isn’t real, then I must be dead. I don’t think I am though, not just yet.”
She tried to come to terms with the weight and meaning of his words, but if she really was alive again, if she’d really been gone three decades, that would not settle on her for some time. Maybe ever. “Where...” She swallowed and choked on the effort. “Are we?”
“No one told you?”
Elloven shook her head on the pillow.
“We’re in Sesto and Daire’s croft. In Rivenholde. They’ve lived here for as many years as you’ve been gone.”
