I sit down beneath the willow and let the branches close around me. Then I close my eyes and breathe in.
My grandmother used to sit exactly here. I remember the shape of her in this spot. She would close her eyes too, and I never understood it then, but I definitely understand now.
She was just being grateful for a moment of stillness.
Bullshit gets to people so damn easily. It’s nice to take a moment and think it away.
I let myself do that, too.
I don’t know how long I sit like that but—
Someone sits down beside me.
My heart stops, then starts again, very, very fast. Something in my body knows before the rest of me does. Some animal part that has spent a long time learning a specific gravity, the way the air changes when certain people enter it.
I open my eyes.
Cassian is the first thing I see.
Then Nathaniel, cross-legged on my other side, watching me with that careful stillness of his.
Then Talon, standing just beyond the willow’s curtain of branches,
Oh my god.
I stare at them.
They look… wrong, is my first thought, and then immediately:no. Not wrong. Different. More. Like someone took everything they already were and turned up the volume.
They are wearing their combat gear.
In this golden, impossible garden, with the willow trailing around us and the flowers doing whatever flowers do in a place like this, they are standing there in full gear, worn and familiar, exactly as they were on that hillside.
“Hi,” Cassian says.
The word comes out of him like he’s been saving it for minutes.
“You’re not real,” I say.
“Skye—“
“Death sent you. He felt guilty about the whole Mark thing and sent me a very convincing vision, and I appreciate it, I do, but—“
Nathaniel reaches over and takes my hand.
I stop talking.
His hand is warm. So damn warm.
“We’re real,” he says quietly.
I look at him. Then at Cassian. Then past them both at Talon, who has come through the willow branches and is standing close enough that I could reach out and touch him.
“That’s not possible,” I say. “I watched you… I left you on that hillside. You were—“
“Alive,” Talon says. “Yes, we were alive. But only partially.”
I don’t understand.
