Chapter 18
Flash tried to keep his breathing even after that unbelievable experience, his hand resting across the back of Lechuza’s chair, needing to be close to her.
Fly leaned into the leather club chair, the scent of old paper and wood polish thick in the estate's library. Beyond the tall windows, the Peruvian late afternoon light went gold, the manicured gardens disappearing into shadow. They'd lost the light, and they'd lost North.
"It’s getting dark," Fly said, his voice rough with exhaustion.
"Finding the owl effigy will be hampered until morning.
" He gestured toward the maps spread across the mahogany table, imagery of the cloud forest, her father's notes, the coordinates they'd pulled from the quipu.
"From what I can gather from the register, Quri had a sanctuary deep in the montane forest. We can corridor in, but we've still got a trek through mountainous terrain.
Everyone rest." His eyes found Flash, then Lechuza, sitting apart from the others, her fingers tracing patterns on her knee that might have been glyphs. "We've expended a lot of energy today."
He didn't say and we lost our anchor. The absence of North's steady presence pulsed through the room like a missing beating heart.
"Especially you two." Fly's voice softened, losing its operational edge. "Being bombarded with ancestral memory...the quipu, the vision." He paused, his jaw tightening. "It rewires something. The mental capacity required just to process what you experienced, what Quri experienced, takes time."
Lechuza's hand stilled. She didn't look up, but Flash saw the way her shoulders curved inward, protective and private. The kiss they'd shared in the aftermath still hung between them, unspoken and terrifying in its certainty.
"We're trying to find your connection to her," Fly continued, his gaze distant, the Visionary pushing through his own grief. "The resonance that will let you open the font without it consuming you. But that requires you functional, not fractured."
"Experiencing those flashbacks," Easy said, his voice unusually thin.
He stretched his arms overhead, vertebrae popping like firecrackers, but the movement lacked his usual loose energy.
He looked over at Twister, attempting his familiar grin but managing only a grimace.
"They're draining in a way I didn't understand until I was inside one.
" The silence that followed was heavy with what none of them would say.
Like watching North fall. Like feeling him go quiet on the bond. "Run?"
Twister arched a brow from where he sat by the window, the fading light catching the dark circles beneath his eyes. He'd been bruised since the swan, since he'd killed Null and sealed North's empty body in the same breath. "That constitutes rest?"
"Tex would kick our asses into next week if we let PT slide." Easy stood, joints protesting, and offered a hand. "Thirty minutes. Shake out the...trauma." The word caught, too small for what they were carrying.
Lechuza stirred, lifting her head. Her eyes found Flash's, and something electric and frightened passed between them, the memory of water, of recognition, of a love that had waited almost five centuries.
"A run sounds good," she said, her voice carefully neutral.
"Dinner in an hour. That gives us time."
When he entered the bedroom after some drills with the guys, he found Lechuza curled on the sumptuous suite’s couch, in a silky blush robe, her knees drawn up, and her spine curved in a defensive comma.
Her hair, freshly dried from her shower, was thick and black, cascading over her shoulders.
Her unfocused eyes were staring at some middle distance where he couldn't follow.
He'd learned to read that particular vacancy, the way her breath came shallow and controlled, the way her left hand gripped her right wrist hard enough to whiten her knuckles.
She was carrying something. The kind of weight she considered hers alone to bear.
“What is it?”
She turned hollow eyes to him. “Bagh…he and O-voo found the woman who’s been impersonating me. They’re moving in.” She dropped her face into her hands. “I told them to stand down,” she said, anger and grief mixed together. “I can’t lose—”
He rushed to her and caught her against him as she buried her face in his neck. “I’ve got you, babe,” he whispered.
She wrapped her arms around him, pushed into him, and he took the weight, pulling her onto his lap and cradling her against him.
“I’m afraid, Jae. Terrified, and I hate it. That vision was just the tip of a very large iceberg, and it could sink us. I feel something awful pressing in.”
He smoothed his hands through her hair. “I’m going to be with you every step of the way.”
“You promise,” she whispered, looking up at him, drinking in his features. “I can’t lose you now. I can’t.”
“You won’t.” He held her until she stirred.
“Take your shower,” she said. “Dinner will be ready in a bit. Do you want to eat in here with me?” Her tone was low, the ask already a foregone conclusion.
He nodded, closing his eyes and leaning into her palm as she tenderly cupped his face, her expression softening.
“You are a very handsome boy,” she whispered. “Whatever name you carry.”
Fifteen minutes later, the water stopped.
He stood in the steam, dripping, heart already hammering for reasons that had nothing to do with exertion and everything to do with the woman waiting in the next room.
He didn't towel off completely. Let her see him.
Let there be no pretense between them, not after the bridge, not after the quipu, not after he'd felt her soul recognize his across the divide of centuries.
She had moved to the bed, and her eyes found him immediately when he emerged, tracking the droplets sliding down his chest, his stomach, the V of his hips. A bold, consuming appraisal, the same fierce focus she brought to everything. She didn't shrink from what she wanted.
He crossed to her. The air between them charged, primal, inevitable.
"I felt you," he said, his voice rough. "In the vision. Across the water. I knew you before I knew myself."
She sat up, unfolding from her curled position, meeting him at the edge of the bed. Her hands found his waist, thumbs brushing the ridges of muscle there, claiming him. "Then know me now," she said. "No past. No future. Just this."
He pulled her up into him, mouth finding hers with confidence that bypassed thought.
She tasted like salt and faith, like the answer to a question he'd been asking since before he knew how to ask it.
Her robe, his towel, barriers falling away until there was only skin, only heat, only the desperate press of her body against his.
They fell back onto the bed together, limbs tangling, hands mapping territories they'd claimed before but couldn't stop exploring.
He rolled her beneath him, felt her arch up to meet him, demanding, generous, his in a way that defied logic or time.
When he entered her, she gasped his name, “Jae.” Not the ghost but the man, and her legs wrapped around his waist, pulling him deeper.
"Look at me," she commanded, her fingers framing his face. "Stay here. With me."
He locked his eyes on hers, dark and endless and alive, and let everything else burn away.
The estate, the mission, North's absence, the weight of what they'd seen.
There was only the rhythm of their bodies, the slap of skin, the way she met him thrust for thrust, demanding more, demanding everything.
I love her. I have loved her…for a long time.
The realization simply was, always had been, a constant he'd been too blind to name.
He loved her in this life as he had in that one, as he would in any that followed.
The feeling expanded in his chest, limitless, terrifying in its depth, and he let it.
He let himself drown in it, in her, driving into her with a desperation that bordered on worship.
She came first, crying out, her body clamping around him, her hands desperate for him.
He followed, spilling into her with a ragged shout of surrender and desire intertwined, pleasure detonating down his spine, his vision whiting out at the edges.
He collapsed against her, face buried in her neck, breathing her in, their hearts hammering a synchronized rhythm that felt like yes, yes, always, yes.
The quiet came slowly. The steam from his shower had dissipated, leaving the air cool against their sweat-slicked skin. He held her, still joined, her leg thrown over his hip, her fingers tracing lazy patterns on his shoulder. He should have been content. He should have been at peace.
But the waterfall wouldn't leave him alone.
It crept in at the edges, the sound of it from the vision, the roar of water, the way Cisco had looked at Quri with absolute devotion before the end. He'd been that man. He'd been him, looking at her, loving her with his whole heart, his whole soul.
If love carries across lifetimes...
The thought arrived, treacherous, opening like a trapdoor beneath the floorboards. He fell through it, the horror waiting below. If he was Flash, but also Cisco, and if she was Lechuza, but also Quri, then the blood she'd spilled to save the world, the man she'd killed to deny access to the font...
Could be him.
His arms tightened around her, protective and possessive, as if he could hold the realization at bay through sheer force of will. She stirred, her hand stilling on his chest.
"Flash?"
"Just..." He swallowed, forcing his voice level, forcing the words. "The visions. They're bleeding into me. The waterfall. It won't stop."
She shifted, rising up on one elbow, her dark hair a curtain around them. "We're here," she said, grounding him with her gaze. "This is real. You and me, in this bed, in this life."
"I know." Too quick, too loud. "I'm here. I'm Flash. That's all."