29. Brynn
brYNN
Icome back into my body all at once, like falling the last inch into a chair you thought was further away.
The spirit circle is gone. The salt is scattered. And Leo has my face in both his hands before I’ve even finished breathing.
“You’re back.” His voice is wrecked. “You’re back, you’re back.”
“I’m back.” My throat is dry. “Mostly.”
“Don’t ever do that again.”
“No promises.”
He kisses me anyway, hard and fast, like he’s checking I’m real. The dark that came through the walls is gone too. Whatever Leo did, whatever he became while I was away, it held.
I pull back to look at him. Something’s different. The wolf behind his eyes isn’t clawing at the bars anymore. It’s just watching. Steady.
“You found something,” I say.
“So did you.”
Neither of us says it yet. We can’t, not here, not with the warning still sitting cold in my chest.
The twins die first.
I don’t look at Tristan. I make myself not look at Tristan.
We regroup in the library because it’s the only room with walls still standing.
Evelina has commandeered the long table. Maps of the resort. Diagrams of the convergence. A stack of Fairmont research she’s been hiding for who knows how long, finally spread out in the open like a confession.
The brothers fill the room the way they always do. Loud. Too big for the space. Tristan’s already got his feet on a priceless chair.
“So,” Dominic says, dropping into the seat beside me. “The witch goes to a magic spirit dimension, comes back, immediately gets mauled by our brother. Standard Tuesday.”
“It’s Thursday,” Evander says, not looking up from a page.
“It’s been Thursday for three days. Time’s broken. Keep up.”
“Is it the convergence,” Tristan asks, “or is that just you refusing to own a watch?”
“A watch is a leash for your wrist.”
“It’s a watch, Dominic.”
“That’s exactly what a leash would say.”
Evander turns a page without glancing up. “The convergence is bending time near the dome. Four hours of drift since last night, give or take.”
“See.” Dominic spreads his hands at me, vindicated. “Not my fault. Astronomical.”
I laugh before I can stop myself. It comes out cracked, but it’s real.
That’s the thing nobody warned me about this family. How they pull you in. How they make you laugh with the world ending two floors down.
“Okay.” Leo takes the head of the table. The room settles around him without him asking. “Tell me what we have.”
Brynn-from-an-hour-ago would’ve stayed quiet. Let them plan. Have stood at the edge of it.
But, I don’t.
“The ritual locks at full convergence,” I say. “Every false bond across seven realms, permanent. They need to finish before the moon tightens all the way.”
“And we stop it, how?” Tristan asks.
I feel the answer drop into my chest, heavy and certain. “A true witness inside a true bond. I walk into their ritual. I unmake it from the inside.”
The room goes quiet.
“No,” Leo says.
“Leo.”
“I heard a version of this an hour ago that ended with you not breathing. No.”
“It’s not your call.”
“It’s not yours either.” He leans on the table. “Not alone.”
And there it is. The thing his vision gave him. He’s not trying to lock me in a tower anymore. He’s trying to stand next to me in the open.
I hate how much I love that.
Evander hasn’t said anything in a while.
That’s never good.
He’s got two pages side by side, frowning at them like they owe him money.
“What?”
“The prophecy.” He taps one. “Arabella’s. It says the released magic takes the doubled thread first. The twins.”
My stomach drops. I’d hoped, stupidly, that part got lost in the spirit realm.
“Twins,” Evander says slowly. “Tristan and I are twins.”
“Evander.” Evelina’s voice is a warning.
“It’s fine, Mom.” But his jaw is tight. “I’m just noting that a seven-hundred-year-old dead witch put a target on my brother and me, and everyone in this room found out before we did.”
“That’s not how prophecy works,” I say.
“Then tell me how it works.”
I open my mouth. Close it. Because I don’t know. Arabella said the magic takes the doubled thread first, and I’ve been carrying it like a coal in my hand, and I don’t know how to put it down without burning someone.
Tristan, for once, isn’t joking.
He’s looking at his brother. Just looking.
“Then we don’t split up,” Tristan says quietly. “Simple. We stay together. Whatever comes for one of us comes through both.”
“That’s not simpler. That’s just two of you in one place.”
“Yeah.” Tristan shrugs. “And I’m not losing you. So.”
Something passes between them. The kind of thing twins have that the rest of us only get to watch.
I look away. Give them the moment.
Evelina finds me by the window while the brothers argue logistics.
She doesn’t do soft. I’ve learned that much. She enters rooms like she’s billing them.
So when she stands beside me and says nothing for a long moment, I know to wait.
“I buried an empty casket,” she says finally. “Twelve years ago. I let my sons grieve a man who was breathing under their feet because I thought silence would keep them safe.”
“You didn’t know what the Circle would do.”
“I knew enough.” Her hands are folded. Steady. But her voice isn’t quiet. “I’ve spent my whole life managing this family. Arranging it. I told myself it was protection.”
I don’t say anything.
“And then a chaos witch sets a love seat on fire in the matchmaking resort,” she says, “and within a week she’s done what I never could. She’s made them honest.”
I blink. “Was that a compliment?”
“Don’t get used to it.”
But she puts her hand over mine on the windowsill. Just for a second. Cool rings, warm grip.
“You’re one of mine now,” she says. “Whatever happens down there. You should know that before you go.”
My eyes sting. I look hard at the convergence outside so she won’t see.
“That’s an awful thing to say right before a battle,” I tell her.
“Yes,” she agrees. “I’ve never been good at timing.”
Leo finds me after.
The room’s thinning out. Brothers prepping. The light through the dome has gone the wrong color, a light purple, the moon pulling tight.
He doesn’t say anything at first. Just stands close. Lets his shoulder press mine.
“You heard her?”
“I heard her.”
“She’s right.” His hand finds the small of my back. “You’re ours.”
“You all keep saying that like it’s not terrifying.”
“It is terrifying. That’s how you know it’s real.” He turns me toward him. “When this is done.”
“Leo.”
“No. I want it out loud.” His thumb moves along my jaw. “I saw a hundred versions of this family an hour ago. Men who held instead of chose. I came back wanting the opposite. Wanting the thing you already said you wanted. Kitchen. Big windows. A dog. I’m holding you to it.”
“That was before. A different conversation.”
“It’s the only conversation that’s mattered.” His forehead drops to mine. “Tell me you want it too.”
The bond hums between us, quiet and steady and mine.
“I want it,” I whisper. “Bad windows and a stupid dog and you not sleeping until I make you. All of it.”
He kisses me slowly. No desperation this time. Just a promise pressed mouth to mouth, the kind you make when you both know the dark is coming.
For one stretch of time, the resort is quiet. The family is whole. And I let myself believe we might walk out of this.
That’s my mistake.
The cold hits the back of my neck first.
Not a draft. A presence. The same wrong, bent magic I’ve sensed since the night the wards fell, except now it’s behind me, inside the warded library, where nothing should be able to reach.
I pull back from Leo. “Did you feel that?”
“Feel what?”
He didn’t feel it. None of them did.
Only me. Because it’s keyed to me. It always was.
The symbols on my collarbone flare to life. Not silver this time. The deep, drowning blue of the archive trap.
“Leo.” My voice comes out small. “Something’s wrong.”
He grabs for me.
His hand closes on empty air.
The floor opens. Not down. Sideways, wrong, the way a door opens in a dream. I feel myself come unmoored from the room, from the bond, from his fingers a half-inch from mine.
“brYNN.”
I see his face. I see all of them turning. I see Tristan launch across the table and Evelina’s mouth open on a word she doesn’t get to finish.
Then the blue closes over me like water.
And the last thing I hear, far away and already fading, is Leo screaming my name into a room I’m no longer standing in.