He stopped and turned. “How much time does he have…if he’s in the Veil?”
Twister’s jaw clenched and he looked away. “I can’t keep him like this indefinitely. The longer he’s gone, the worse it is for his physical body. Four days, probably. This is all new to me, but my Veil healing energy is screaming at me to get him back.”
He didn’t have to spell it out for her. If North’s body died, he would have no way to get home. That knowledge was in Twister’s eyes as he left.
“Give me a moment,” she whispered to Kuntur. He nodded and slipped out of the room.
North lay there, centered in the bed like an offering. The power Twister had used to preserve the shell of him while his soul wandered the Veil hummed with a familiarity under her skin, its energy radiating a soft blue light. She'd seen men diebefore. Had caused death herself, precise and necessary. But this was worse, this suspended animation, thiswaiting, this physical manifestation of the cost they'd already paid, lying in state while the team held their breath and hoped.
She crossed to him. The stasis field prickled against her skin as she entered its perimeter, raising the hair on her arms. North's chest rose and fell in an eerie cadence. His face was peaceful, untroubled by the war being waged for his return. She reached out, her fingers brushing back his hair, just to touch him, ground herself that he was still alive. His skin was warm, his hair soft.
What else will you take?she asked the silence.How much heavier does the scale tip?
Bagh? O-voo? One of Flash’s teammates. She closed her eyes, her throat so tight.
Beneath the grief and worry lurked the question that wouldn't settle.How am I connected to her?Fly's analysis had ruled out direct descent. Quri had died without children, and Cisco's line ended with him. But Lechuza felt the resonance in her bones, the way the quipu hadknownher. Cousin lines. Collateral branches. Some thread of DNA that had survived five centuries to coil in her blood, waiting.
The door whispered open behind her. She knew his step, his presence, the way the air changed when he entered a room.
Flash's arms encircled her from behind, solid and warm, pulling her back against his chest. He said nothing, just held her, his chin resting on her shoulder, his breath stirring her hair. They stood together, watching North breathe, Twister’s magic real and solid for a soul that had wandered elsewhere.
"Couldn't sleep," she said.
"No." His voice rumbled through his chest into her back. "You left."
She leaned into him, letting him take her weight, and the choice to do so burned in her throat. This was the vulnerability she feared, her sovereignty surrendered. She chose it. Opened the gate and let him in, knowing the cost, knowing the risk.
"I keep thinking about balance," she said, her eyes fixed on North's still face. "About scales." She paused, the words assembling themselves, heavy and sharp. "Do you think we have to pay a debt later? In our lives, our...evolution? That nothing's free, that the universe keeps accounts?"
The question hung between them, charged. He tensed, and she noted the almost imperceptible hitch in his breathing. He'd buried something last night. To spare her? Fear reaching her fearless SEAL? The wall went up behind his eyes when she'd asked whether it was real. Now her question struck against whatever he'd hidden, and she felt the reverberation through his body.
"I think," he said slowly, carefully, "that we pay as we go. That the cost is the choice itself."
She turned in his arms, finally facing him, and the blue light carved shadows beneath his eyes, into the hollows of his cheeks. He looked haunted. Looked like a man holding something heavy.
"If the choice is love?" she asked. "If that's the currency?"
His hands tightened on her waist. "Then we spend it anyway. We spend it all."
She rose on her toes, kissed him, tasted the lie he was telling himself and the truth he couldn't quite bury. When she pulled back, her palms framed his face, her thumbs tracing the tension there.
"Don't hide from me," she whispered. "Not about this. Whatever's waiting in the dark, we face it together. That's the only way this works."
He closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against hers, and the war in him also raged in her. The need to protect her from what he suspected, the dread of speaking it aloud. But when he opened his eyes again, he only nodded, silent, and pulled her back against his chest.
They stood there, holding each other in the humming blue light, watching North breathe, both of them keeping their secrets close, both of them choosing, again and again, to stay anyway.
She pressed her face into his neck, his hoodie warm against her skin.
“When we met…in Venezuela, I was naked too. You gave me clothing.” Her throat tightened. “Cisco did the same thing at the waterfall.”
“He didn’t?—”
“He did. The echo of it sits in my heart.”
He sighed. “Fuck.”
They stood there for a few more minutes. “I have a favor to ask.”
