Chapter 39 Kaelren #2
I moved without thinking, crossing the chamber on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else. Fell to my knees again beside the small silver object that Sarnyx was pointing to.
Elle’s locket.
The one her grandmother had given her. The one she’d been wearing since the day she fell into this realm. The one she’d touched whenever she was scared or sad or missing home.
My hands shook as I picked it up. The silver was impossibly warm, as if it hadn’t touched stone at all, as if she’d just—
I couldn’t finish the thought.
The locket pulsed in my palm—alive.
“What—” My voice broke.
“Open it,” Sarnyx said softly.
I did.
Inside, the tiny portrait of Elle’s mother smiled up at me. But something was wrong. The edges of the image shimmered, distorted, like I was seeing it through heat haze or water or time itself. And when I tilted it, the image changed. For just a moment, it wasn’t Elle’s mother looking back at me.
It was Elle.
Not as she’d been—as she was now: fractured, many.
Existing in seventeen moments at once, her face overlapping with itself, her eyes looking at me from past and future and never-were simultaneously.
She looked confused. Lost. But when her eyes—all seventeen versions of her eyes—met mine, I felt the bond flare.
Recognition. Love. Desperation that mirrored my own.
Then the image flickered back to her mother, and I was left holding a locket that shouldn’t exist, that couldn’t exist, that was somehow a bridge between her scattered existence and my linear one.
“She’s in there,” I breathed. “She’s—”
“Not in it,” Eltrien said. “Connected to it.”
I closed my fist around the locket, feeling it pulse against my palm. Feeling her through it, distant and fragmented but undeniably there.
“Then I’ll never let it go.”
The vow came out raw, absolute. I would guard this thing with everything I had. Would keep it safe, keep it whole, keep it as a beacon for her to follow home.
“Kaelren,” Eltrien said carefully. “It runs both ways. If you come apart, she’ll feel it across every moment. It will slow her return.”
“Are you saying I can’t grieve?” The words came out sharp, dangerous.
“I’m saying you need to survive. More than that, you need to live. She needs you to be her anchor, and anchors have to be strong. Stable. Present.”
I wanted to rage. He was asking the impossible.
But looking around the chamber—at the survivors who needed leadership, at the realm that was about to descend into chaos, at the future Elle had sacrificed herself to create—I understood.
She’d given me a purpose. A reason to keep going when every instinct screamed to follow her into temporal flux.
Be her lighthouse. Keep the realm together. Make sure she had something worth coming back to.
I could do that. I would do that.
Not yet.
Now, I needed to feel this. Needed to let the grief have its moment before I locked it away and became whatever the realm needed me to be.
“Give me an hour,” I said, standing with the locket clutched tight. “One hour. Then I’ll be the leader you need. But right now, I need to fall apart.”
Thrak nodded slowly. “One hour. We’ll secure the chamber. Deal with the bodies. You go… do what you need to do.”
I left them there. Walked out of the chamber, through corridors that were already starting to repair themselves now that the Bloom was freed, until I found a small empty room that had probably been a guard station once.
Then, and only then, did I let myself break.
Grief hit like a blow. I doubled over, pressing my back against the wall, sliding down until I was sitting in the dark with my head in my hands and the locket pressed against my chest.
“Elle,” I said to the darkness, to the empty air, to the scattered fragments of her that might be able to hear me across time. “Elle, I’m here. I’m waiting. I don’t know how long it will take. I don’t know if you can find your way back. But I’m here. I’ll always be here.”
The locket pulsed once. Warm. Alive.
And through our stretched, thinned bond between us, I felt something. Not words. Not even coherent thought. Just emotion, raw and overwhelming:
“Afraid. Lost. Learning. Still me. Still fighting. Wait for me.”
“Always,” I whispered back, and let the tears come.
You become the lighthouse that guides them home.
Even when you don’t know if home still exists.
Even when the waiting might last forever.
I gave myself the hour. Sixty minutes to fall completely apart, to scream and rage in that empty room. To feel everything I’d been holding back in the name of survival and leadership and not scaring the people who needed me to be strong.
Then I stood up, wiped my face, and became whatever the realm needed.
When I returned to the chamber, the survivors had organized themselves into something resembling order.
Bodies had been moved to one side, covered with whatever cloth could be found.
The wounded were being tended by Eltrien and the few other healers who’d survived.
Someone had even started trying to clear the debris, though the task was enormous.
They all stopped when they saw me. Waiting. Watching.
“The Bloom has scattered,” I said, with authority I didn’t feel—and would fake until it became real. “The Crown has fallen. Auradelle has been transformed into part of his own apparatus—fitting justice for someone who treated people like tools.”
A few bitter laughs at that.
“Every petty noble with ambition is going to try to claim power in the chaos. We’re not going to let that happen.”
“What are you suggesting?” Thrak asked.
“I’m suggesting we make sure Elle has a realm worth coming back to.
” I looked at each of them—rebels, former guards, my crew, strangers who’d become allies.
“The Bloom scattered because Elle freed it. That power belongs to everyone now, or no one. We’re going to make sure it stays that way.
No more central control. No more magical monarchy. ”
“That’s chaos,” someone protested.
“Good,” I replied. “Order gave us Auradelle. Structure gave us the Crown. Maybe chaos will give us something better.”
“Or maybe it gives us warlords and petty tyrants fighting over scraps,” the same voice countered.
“Then we stop them. We build something new. Not a kingdom—a coalition. Not rulers—guardians.” I was making this up as I went, but it felt right. Felt like something Elle would have wanted. “The Bloom is free. The realm is free. We keep it that way.”
Bryx laughed, slightly hysterical but genuine. “He’s got a point. Can’t be worse than what we had.”
“Sarnyx, Vashael—secure the perimeter. Nimor, scout the ruins for survivors and supplies. Bryx, Kevin—take aerial reconnaissance. I want to know what’s happening in the settlements.”
They dispersed without question, grateful for direction, for purpose. Only Peeble remained, hovering near my shoulder with exhaustion evident in their dimmed shell.
“She actually did it,” they said quietly, the echo of the first Elle speaking through them.
“You knew she would.”
“I hoped. There’s a difference.” They landed on my shoulder, weighing almost nothing.
“I can feel her, you know. All the versions of her, past and future and never-were. She’s learning things no one was meant to know.
Seeing the truth behind the Root and Bloom’s separation. Understanding why we’ve been trapped.”
“Will it change her?”
Peeble was quiet for a long moment. “Yes. She’s spanning timelines—learning what no one should. When she comes back—if she comes back—she’ll be more than she was. More than anyone has ever been.”
“But still Elle?”
“I think so. Hope so.” They shifted on my shoulder.
“But Kaelren—you need to understand that bringing herself back to a single moment, a single timeline, might be the hardest thing she’s ever done.
Right now, she exists everywhere. Condensing all of that into one now…
it might be impossible. Or it might take longer than any of us can imagine. ”
“Then I’ll wait.” I touched the locket around my neck. “However long it takes.”
“Even if it’s forever?”
“Especially then.”