Rianne
Midnight.
We don’t prepare. No formal positioning. We’re standing in the middle of Fiction, scattered books around our feet. Keith is corralling the shadow creatures into the basement for safety, shouting about “emergency evacuation procedures” and “maintaining slide quality during crisis.”
“I’m scared,” I tell Stenrik, taking his translucent hands in mine.
“Me too.”
“Good. Let’s be scared together.”
The Chronicle floats between us, glowing so bright it hurts to look at. Pages turn on their own, faster and faster, until the words blur into pure light.
We don’t need them anyway. We know what to do.
Our hands meet, palm to palm, and the synchronization is instant. Not because we’ve practiced, but because we know each other now. I breathe, he breathes with me. Our hearts find their rhythm without trying.
“Stage one,” we say in unison, and laugh because we didn’t plan that.
The magic builds around us, but something’s different. The air shimmers, and suddenly...
Doorways. Made of ice and shadow, they form around us in a circle. Through each one, I can see a different future.
“What...” I start.
“The ceremony,” Stenrik says, voice tight. “It’s showing us alternatives.”
The first door shows me back with Martin. We’re in Aspen after all, and he’s apologizing, promising to change. I look comfortable. Safe. Miserable.
“That’s one option,” the magic whispers through both of us.
I feel it immediately: a pull toward that door, gentle at first, then stronger. My feet slide half a step toward it without my permission.
“Rianne?” Stenrik’s voice is strained.
The second door shows Stenrik alone at Henderson’s statue, three hundred more years of solitude stretching before him. No complications. No chaos. No warmth.
“Another option,” the magic says.
Now he’s being pulled too. I can see him leaning toward his door, his feet sliding slightly on the library floor.
More doors appear. Me at the library, normal and opaque but alone. Stenrik in his realm, powerful but frozen. Separate futures, uncomplicated by permanent bonds or transformation or each other.
“These are escape routes,” I realize, fighting the pull. “We can choose these instead.”
“Easier paths,” Stenrik agrees, his voice tight with effort.
Through the door with Martin, I hear him saying, “Come on, Rianne. You know we work. Three years can’t be thrown away for three days with a stranger.”
My hand tightens on Stenrik’s, but I’m still sliding toward the door. “He’s not wrong. Three years versus three days.”
“Four days,” Stenrik corrects, but he’s being pulled toward his own door now, and only our clasped hands are keeping us together.
Through his door, I see the simplicity of solitude. No one to worry about. No one to potentially lose. No permanent bonds that might hurt.
“It would be simpler,” he admits, fighting the pull.
“Much simpler.”
We stand there, surrounded by escape routes, hands clasped, both see-through as ghosts. The magic waits. The doors pull harder, and we’re being dragged in opposite directions. Our fingers start to slip.
The door with Martin shifts, showing more. Sunday mornings where he watches sports while I read alone. Date nights that are really his work events. The slow erosion of self that I’d been accepting as normal.
“That’s not love,” I say quietly, planting my feet harder. “That’s habit.”
Stenrik’s door shows more too. Centuries of perfect control, no chaos, no warmth, no me there, making terrible jokes or racing library carts or drinking awful wine.
“That’s not living,” he says. “That’s just existing.”
Carl appears at the edge of our circle, solid now, holding a sign: “CARL SUPPORTS CHOOSING HAPPINESS.”
“Thanks, Carl,” I say, and Stenrik nods.
The magic pulses, impatient. “Choose.”
I look at Stenrik. Translucent, formal, emotionally constipated, trying so hard to change. He looks at me. See-through, chaotic, deflecting with humor, trying to be brave.
We turn away from the doors, facing each other fully. The moment we do, I notice something. My hands are solidifying. Still see-through, but more like clouded glass than clear ice.
“Those doors look really appealing,” I admit, still fighting their pull.
“They do.”
“Simple.”
“Uncomplicated.”
“No risk of failure.”
“No permanent bonds with someone you’ve known four days.”
“Two and a half,” I correct, and he smiles.
“But?” the magic prompts.
I take a breath. “But simple isn’t better. It’s just... simple.”
“And I’ve had three hundred years of simple,” Stenrik adds. “It’s overrated.”
The doors pull harder. We have to hold each other now, arms around each other, to keep from being separated.
“I choose the complicated path,” I say. “The one with bad jokes and emotional processing and height differences that require stepladders.”
“I choose chaos,” he says. “Wine that tastes like dissolved candy and naming shadow creatures and someone who laughs when she should be serious.”
I’m becoming more solid. I can feel it, substance returning to my bones. But the doors aren’t giving up. They pull harder, and I see shadows starting to creep up our arms. The price of resistance.
“Even though we’re a mess?”
“Especially because we’re a mess. A matching mess.”
The doors flicker, wavering. But the shadow creeps higher, past our elbows now. We’re starting to transform from the effort of rejecting the easy paths.
“I choose you,” we say in unison, not planned, just true.
“Not the bond,” I add, watching shadow reach my shoulders. “You.”
“Not the solution,” he adds, shadow at his neck. “You.”
The magic pauses, considering. The shadows reach our faces. We’re about to become shadow creatures from the sheer effort of resistance.
Then the magic laughs, bright and warm and approving. The shadows retreat. We solidify rapidly, becoming almost completely opaque. The doors shatter into light that swirls around us, through us. The Chronicle rises, pages now pure brightness.
We’re solid except for the faintest translucency, like we’re waiting for one last thing to seal the choice.
“Stage three,” we gasp together.
“Do you choose this bond, knowing it’s permanent?” the magic asks through us.
“I choose Rianne,” Stenrik says, looking only at me. “The person, not the solution. For Tuesday mornings and Thursday afternoons and all the ordinary moments between extraordinary ones.”
“I choose Stenrik,” I say. “The person who makes ice flowers and terrible jokes he doesn’t know are jokes. For expired soup and cart races and Keith’s presentations.”
The magic crests, building to something overwhelming, and I realize.
“We have to seal it,” Stenrik says.
“How?”
He cups my face in his hands, and I go up on tiptoes, and our lips meet as the magic peaks. The kiss is desperate, deep, both of us pouring everything into it. Our fear, our hope, our choice of each other over easier paths.
Energy explodes through us, around us. I feel myself solidifying completely, becoming fully opaque again.
Through the kiss, I feel Stenrik’s centuries of loneliness shattering, replaced by us.
The Chronicle falls beside us, just a normal book now.
The boundary around the library shimmers and dissolves.
We break apart, gasping. I’m solid. He’s solid. We’re ourselves again, but changed. I can feel him like a warm presence in my chest, and when I look at him, his eyes hold flecks of gold that weren’t there before.
“We did it,” I breathe. “Permanently bonded. Not shadow creatures.”
“Not shadow creatures,” he confirms, and the relief in his voice matches mine.
We stare at each other in the sudden quiet. The magic has settled, the Chronicle lies silent, and we’re alone. Really alone. The weight of what we’ve just done, what we’ve chosen, hangs between us like a physical thing.
Then Stenrik moves. Sudden and decisive, he lifts me up, and my legs wrap around his waist automatically. The shift makes me gasp, not from surprise but from how right it feels.
“Where...” I start.
“Somewhere without an audience,” he says roughly, already walking.
His hands are firm on my thighs, holding me against him as he navigates through the scattered books. I can feel his heartbeat racing against mine, quick and urgent.
“The children’s section,” I say against his ear. “Reading corner. It has cushions.”
He changes direction without hesitation, carrying me like I weigh nothing. Which, given his strength, I probably don’t. I kiss his neck because I can, because we’re permanent, because we chose this. He makes a sound that vibrates through both of us and walks faster.
“Is this okay?” he asks, even as his grip tightens.
“More than okay,” I breathe, then bite gently at the spot where his neck meets his shoulder.
His response is to press me against the nearest bookshelf, just for a moment, kissing me with an intensity that makes my head spin. When he pulls back, we’re both breathing hard.
“Reading corner,” he says, more command than statement.
“Reading corner,” I agree.
He carries me the rest of the way, and by the time we reach the children’s section with its pile of story time cushions and soft carpet, we’re both desperate with need that has nothing to do with magic and everything to do with choosing each other completely.
The cushions are soft beneath us when he sets me down, and the moonlight through the windows casts everything in silver. We’re solid, we’re real, we’re permanent.
And finally, finally, we’re alone.
The story time cushions are soft beneath us, moonlight painting everything silver through the high windows. Stenrik sets me down carefully, like I might break, which is ridiculous given everything we’ve just survived.
“I’m not fragile,” I remind him, pulling him down with me.
“I know.” His voice is rough, uncertain. “But this matters.”
I reach up, trace the sharp line of his jaw. “We chose each other. Against easier paths. That matters.”