Chapter 26 #3
The trees around us were even worse than I remembered. Bare trunks leaned at sharp angles across the broken forest. Barren ground showed between exposed roots, and a wide scar split the nearest hillside where the earth had collapsed. Farther away, crumbling white towers rose against the dark.
My vision blurred, and I covered my mouth. “I’m sorry.”
Xandros flinched, and the small movement stopped me more completely than a shout could have.
His eyes dropped before returning to mine. “I know you are.”
“It isn’t enough.”
“No.” His voice had gone rough, and this time he looked at me fully. “No, it isn’t.”
He started toward me.
I reached for the nearest silver trunk, but my fingers caught only air as the ground shifted beneath my feet.
Xandros caught me before I fell, one arm wrapping around my waist while the other closed behind my neck. My forehead struck his chest, and for one breath I hung against him with his heart hammering beneath my cheek, warm and fast.
Fear flooded through that fragile tether between us.
Anger closed over it almost immediately, but I had already felt it.
Xandros cursed under his breath.
“I’m fine.”
“You are falling over.”
“I’ve done that before.”
His grip tightened, and I realized what I had said a moment too late.
A rough breath moved through his chest beneath my cheek before he went still again. I did too.
His touch remained at the nape of my neck while my arm rested against his ribs, leaving us caught in a shape my body remembered too well.
I lifted my head.
Our faces were too close, and Xandros was already looking down at me.
In another life, I could have kissed him. The thought came with the same ease it had in my room, before the roads tore open and everything between us broke.
I stepped back instead, and his arms fell away.
The loss of his warmth left me unsteady, but I locked my knees beneath me. “I can walk.”
His attention dropped pointedly toward my legs. “Yes, you have made quite a compelling argument.”
A breath of laughter escaped me before I could stop it.
Xandros stared.
I pressed my lips together. “Sorry.”
Something shifted at the corner of his mouth, there and gone before he turned toward the city.
I followed.
The failing silver forest gave way to the edge of the city. Lanterns burned outside cracked doorways, and people moved quietly beneath them, carrying water, mending what they could, gathering beneath roofs that still stood.
Asterra was wounded everywhere I looked, but her people still lived.
Xandros walked beside me without touching me.
My boot caught against a broken edge of stone, and his fingers twitched toward mine before he stopped himself.
I steadied my footing and kept walking.
The road opened into a small square where an old white fountain stood cracked and dry beneath the lanterns.
Something pale near my boot caught the light.
I stopped.
A thin stem had pushed through a crack between two paving stones. Two narrow silver-green leaves spread near the ground, one torn along the edge, while the stem bent where something had nearly crushed it.
A tiny white flower opened at the top.
I crouched beside it, and Xandros lowered himself beside me.
My fingertips traced the stone near its roots, but nothing answered.
“It doesn’t mean Asterra is healing.”
“No.” I pulled my fingers from the stone before I could linger on the emptiness where my Wild should have answered.
The thin white petals trembled beneath the night wind.
“It only means this survived.”
Xandros stayed quiet while I watched the flower move in the breeze.
I drew in a slow breath. “And for tonight, that has to be enough.”
My legs shook when I stood, and I caught myself before I could fall.
Xandros’s hand remained between us.
For a moment, neither of us moved. Then his wrist turned, and his fingers slowly opened toward mine.
I looked down at the space between us. The first time I had taken his hand, he had been a stranger reaching for me through a wound between worlds. I hadn’t even known his name.
I had held on to him again and again while we tried to save them both.
And then I had betrayed him to save mine. My world. My people.
And still, he opened his hand and offered me the choice.
I slipped my fingers between his.
His grip closed around mine.
The tether answered with the familiar pull of him. Grief moved through it. Anger too. But neither erased the warmth that rose with them.
Xandros stared ahead at the lights climbing the broken city. “I don’t forgive you.”
My grip tightened once around his.
“I know.”
He let out a long, slow exhale, his shoulders sagging with the movement. His thumb brushed once across my knuckles.
“Come on, Wildflower.”
My breath caught.
He turned toward the city without letting go of my hand, and I went with him.
Ahead, Asterra’s lights burned against the dark.
I glanced over my shoulder one last time.
Behind us, the little flower bent beneath the night wind and held.