Chapter 26 #2
No tear between our worlds. No seam left to follow. No way back.
His arm loosened around me, and I finally forced myself to look up.
Ash streaked his pale hair and clung to the strands falling across his forehead. Dirt smeared one sharp cheekbone, and dried blood darkened the open collar of his shirt. His constellations still glowed faintly beneath the ash even after the violence of the crossing.
A breath caught in my throat.
His lips parted as he stared at me.
The careful restraint I had come to expect from him had vanished from his face. His silver eyes held mine with such open intensity that I couldn’t bear to look away.
For one heartbeat, he only stared. Then he scanned me from my face, down to my hands and finally my arms, stopping on the pale, dead vines beneath my skin.
He took my right hand carefully, golden light glimmering through his constellations as he turned my palm toward the moonlight.
Pale light spilled across the blood dried into the lines of my skin. Above his shoulder, the black briars covering the moon had begun to break apart, their hooked shadows thinning from its face until pale light shone through.
Xandros didn’t look up. His thumb hovered beside the Veil Weaver star without touching it. The gold had faded until only a thin outline remained.
His attention snapped over my shoulder.
He searched the empty forest behind me, leaning enough to look past the silver trunks as though someone might still emerge between them.
My throat closed.
Bramble .
I tried to stand but my legs folded immediately.
Xandros caught me again, his hands closing around my arms hard enough to sting before my knees struck the ground a second time.
Cold shook through me now that the crossing was over. My palms burned where the bark had torn them open, every breath pulled against aching ribs, and my legs trembled beneath me.
The instant I steadied, Xandros released me.
I stayed on my knees this time. I couldn’t make myself rise again. My hands hung at my sides, blood drying across my palms, while the emptiness inside me stretched wider. No Wild stirred beneath my skin. No familiar weight burrowed against my neck. Even Xandros’s hands were gone.
He stepped back once, then again, until three paces opened between us.
Cold air filled the space his body had left behind.
That distance hurt worse than anything the Veil had done to me.
He stared down at my arms. “What have you done?”
My hands curled against my thighs.
“I severed myself from the Mother Tree.”
Xandros lifted his head, and for a moment, he simply looked at me.
Then his eyes dropped again to the dying vines.
“Your Wild?”
“In the Veil.” The words scraped across my mouth. “I left it there.”
His gaze moved over me more slowly now, fully taking in the things I couldn’t hide. Not that I would have tried. The Veil had stripped me bare, leaving every part of me exposed and raw beneath his stare.
He took in the colorless vines beneath my skin, the empty space where Bramble should have been, the star barely glowing in my palm, and the tremor I couldn’t stop.
“You cut yourself off.”
I nodded once. “Yes.”
“Completely.”
“Yes.”
He turned away, one hand going to the back of his neck.
Pain tore through the tether between us and struck beneath my ribs hard enough to steal my breath. I folded around it before I could stop myself, one hand pressing against my chest.
Xandros still had his back to me.
All I wanted was to cross the space between us, to reach for him, and somehow ease even a fraction of the pain tearing through him.
But I didn’t move.
I had done this to him. I couldn’t ask him to let me make it hurt less.
Xandros paced several steps before stopping again. When he faced me, the shock had faded from his expression, but what remained was worse.
“You chose them.” The words were quiet.
I forced myself to hold his gaze, measuring the silver stars dying in his ethereal eyes.
“I did.”
His jaw tightened. “You knew what closing those roads would do.”
“I did.”
He took a breath, stepping closer.
“You saw Asterra.”
“Yes.”
His eyes flashed.
“You stood beneath our sky. You walked through my city. You watched my people die.”
Each word struck true, like an arrow finding the center of its mark.
I swallowed the ache in my throat.
“Yes.”
He turned sharply and dragged both hands through his hair. A broken sound escaped him, too rough to be a laugh.
I pushed one foot beneath me. My leg shook under me.
“Xandros—”
“Don’t.”
His back remained toward me.
“I watched you hold the Deepwood together with your Everlight while your own world was dying.”
His shoulders went taut.
My nails bit into the raw skin on my palms. “I knew what you had already chosen.”
He turned and my breath caught at the grief in his face.
“Then you knew better.”
“I did.”
His eyes closed.
My leg trembled harder.
I swallowed the easier answer. “I won’t tell you the oath made me do it.”
His eyes opened again.
“It didn’t.” I shook my head. “It stopped me from using the Wild when I knew I was hurting the Deepwood. That was all.”
He said nothing.
“But I chose what came after.” My voice broke on the last word.
He looked at me for a long time. The night wind moved through the silver trees around us, lifting the loose strands of his hair. Moonlight caught along the constellations at his throat as his chest rose, then slowly fell, but his eyes never left mine.
I didn’t look away either.
The tether still ached between us, his pain muted now but unrelenting. There was nowhere left for either of us to hide from it.
So I let myself feel every bit of it.
“You chose them.”
A tear slipped down my cheek, and I left it there.
“I chose them.”
The words hurt no less the second time.
He searched my face as though he were waiting for me to take some part of it back. To tell him I hadn’t understood the cost. That I would choose differently now that I could see what it had done to him.
I wanted to give him that.
But I couldn’t.
The Mother Tree lived because I had done it.
Rhian lived. Bramble lived.
My people would wake tomorrow beneath branches that still stood.
Xandros' world had lost the only answer we had found.
I hated what that truth had cost him, but it changed nothing.
His brows drew together. His lips parted, but only a thin breath escaped before he tried again. “And now you’re here.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
My chest hollowed around the question.
I looked down at my hands. Dried blood had gathered in the lines of my palms. The gray vines ended above my wrists, dead shapes on skin that belonged only to me now.
I flexed my fingers. The markings stayed still against my skin, and nothing answered the movement.
Everything that had once told me where I belonged was gone.
“Because I wanted to be.”
The words disappeared into the quiet between us.
When I looked up, Xandros’ face had gone still.
“You wanted to be.”
I held his gaze. “Yes.”
His eyes searched mine. “After.”
My chest tightened around the next breath. “Yes.”
He moved a step closer. “After you saved them .”
“Yes.”
“After you sealed my people here and sentenced them to death.”
The accusation scraped through me, but I made myself answer.
“Yes.”
He stared at me long enough that I could have stopped there. I could have let him believe there was some softer version of what I had done.
But there wasn’t, and we both knew it.
“I saved the Deepwood first.”
His nostrils flared.
I forced the rest out. “Then I came.”
His brows pulled together, and his lips parted around a breath that never became words.
My hands began to shake. An apology crowded behind my teeth, already too small for everything standing between us.
Xandros closed another pace. “What did you think that would change?”
“Nothing.”
His brow creased deeper.
I planted one foot beneath me and pushed myself upright. My legs trembled hard enough that I swayed before catching my balance, but I stayed there and faced him.
“I didn’t come because I thought it would undo what I did.”
“Then why?”
My knees threatened to buckle again, and I locked them beneath me.
“Because when everything stopped asking for something from me, I still wanted you.”
For one heartbeat, he only stared.
I kept going before I lost my nerve. “I wanted whatever life was left here. I wanted it even if it was shorter than the one I had. Even if Asterra never heals.” My breath shook. “Even if you can’t forgive me.”
His attention shifted past my face and stopped beside my shoulder.
I followed it to the empty space where Bramble should have been.
My arm folded across my middle before I could stop it, reaching for the familiar warmth that should have been tucked in close.
Xandros saw.
His eyes closed briefly, and when they opened again, they were wet.
“You gave up your Kindred.”
A sob tore free before I could contain it. “I was already losing him.”
He looked toward the ground. “But you still left him.”
The words caught somewhere beneath my ribs and stayed there.
“Yes.”
His attention returned to the dead vines along my arms, lingering there for several breaths.
“And your life?”
My breath stalled.
Our lives ran long beneath the Mother Tree, but whatever years the Wild might have carried me through had ended when I tore myself free.
“The life I would have had.”
His eyes snapped to mine. “You chose a mortal life here.”
“I chose whatever years were mine once I tore myself free.”
“Here.”
“Here.” The word shook when it left me.
I stepped closer. “I chose the Deepwood when it needed me.”
His face pulled tight for one unguarded heartbeat.
“And when it was finally only my life left to choose, I chose you.”
The tether surged between us, carrying grief and anger so tangled together that I couldn’t separate one from the other.
Xandros said nothing, and the silence stretched until the wind moving through the silver branches filled it. Beyond him, Asterra lay beneath the pale moon.