My eyes burn, stupidly. I blink hard because I refuse to cry in here.
But I do.
“Right,” I whisper. “It really has been worth it.”
His expression softens in a way that makes my throat ache. He reaches out and puts his hand on mine.
For a second I wait for something dramatic to happen. For the click. For the pull. For that clean, cinematic moment where everything finally locks into place.
Nothing does.
I let out a shaky breath, almost a laugh, almost a sob.
“So that’s it,” I murmur. “We say the right thing and the universe doesn’t immediately fix us.”
His mouth twitches.
“You can do it,” he says, like he’s stating a fact he hates.
“I can,” I agree, and the words taste strange. “But not like this. Not on command.”
“I told you so.”
He did.
I huff a laugh through my tears and tilt my head at him. “Of course you did.”
He does not even look smug. He just looks relieved, which is somehow worse.
“I understand,” I say. “I get what you’ve been doing, and I get what you have to stop doing. I’ll do my part.”
We sit with that for a moment.
“Soon,” I say, mostly to myself.
“Soon,” he repeats.
I wipe at my face with the back of my hand and try to lighten the air before it crushes me. “I should probably do it fast,” I add, a little too casual. “If I want to live.”
He goes perfectly still.
His stare pins me in place.
I grimace.
“Right,” I say, clearing my throat. “I’m supposed to not want to live. See? I need some work.”
Something shifts in his expression. I think he smiles, a genuine smile I’ve never seen from him. Then my body goes heavy again, and exhaustion rolls over me like a tide.
I squeeze his hand once, then let go and lie back. The room blurs at the edges as sleep drags me under. I close my eyes, lashes still wet, and let myself fall.
I don’t dread the darkness for once.
“My turn,” I say, already looking around for something I can use to damage my eye just enough. I don’t have any ocular damage, and ideally I’d reproduce the exact same conditions Talon had. I never got a good look at Cassian’s eye before his clinical death, but Talon’s data fills that gap.
Cassian’s head snaps toward me. Talon, still half out of it and staring at the empty corner, blinks like he’s not sure he heard me right.
“Now?” Cassian says. “Already?”
