Chapter 11 #2
Sarah's voice, calm and clear: "We'll hold things down here. Do what you need to do."
The connection fractures. Their faces stretch, blur, and dissolve into pink water and sunlight. The glow fades. The pool goes still.
They're gone.
I stay crouched at the edge of the pool for a long time. I'm shaking. My face is wet, and I don't remember when I started crying, but the tears are rolling down my cheeks and dripping into the pool, making tiny ripples in the water that was just showing me the people I love most in any world.
I wipe my eyes with my sleeve and stand up.
Thalia is standing a few feet away, watching me. Her expression is soft in a way I haven't seen from her before. There's a sheen in her eyes too, a glassiness she blinks away quickly, but not quickly enough.
"Thank you," I say, and my voice comes out rough. "For that. I needed it."
She nods. A simple acknowledgment. Then her expression shifts, and the weight comes back into it. The same heaviness I saw in the desert, the same sense that she's carrying something she can't put down.
"I have to leave you now, Elle."
"Of course you do. Mysterious appearances and dramatic exits. That's your whole thing."
She doesn't laugh. She steps closer, and her green eyes lock onto mine with an intensity that pins me in place.
"When the time comes," she says, her voice low and deliberate, as if she's choosing every word with surgical precision, "you must take the leap of faith. Don't hesitate. Don't think. Just jump." She grips my arm, her fingers strong. "There are no more chances after this, Elle. This is it."
"What does that mean? Leap of faith. Leap from where? Into what?"
But she's already pulling away. Already turning toward the dock.
"Thalia—"
"You'll know when you see it." She glances back at me one more time, and for a split second, that nagging feeling is back, the familiarity, the sense that I know her from somewhere deeper than these scattered meetings across iterations.
Then she's climbing into the rowboat, untying the rope, pushing off from the dock with one smooth motion.
"Wait—"
The oars dip into pink water, and she rows. Within minutes she's a silhouette against the glow of the Starblush Sea, and then she's gone.
I stand on the dock and watch the empty water. "Great. Thanks for the cryptic prophecy. Very helpful. Love the communication style."
The sea doesn't answer. It just keeps being impossibly, heartbreakingly pink.
The sun sets in shades of coral and amber.
I find a small fisherman's cottage set back from the beach, half-hidden by dune grass and weathered to a silver-gray that says it's been here longer than anyone remembers.
The door is unlocked. Inside is a simple cot, a table, a fireplace with kindling already stacked.
A wool blanket folded at the foot of the bed.
I eat some dried fruit I find in a sealed jar on the shelf, drink water from a clay pitcher, and collapse onto the cot without even pulling the blanket over myself.
Sleep hits fast. Hard.
And then I'm somewhere else.
At first, I think it's a dream. The vivid, hyper-real dream you get when you're exhausted and your brain goes completely off the rails. But something is wrong with it.
This isn't a dream. It's a merge.
Iteration Eight. I can feel her, this version of me, like a second heartbeat layered over my own. Her thoughts are my thoughts. Her body is my body. But she's the one driving, and I'm just along for the ride, experiencing everything she experiences in first person.
We're in a lighthouse.
The realization settles over me as Iteration Eight Elle's eyes adjust to the dim interior.
Stone walls, circular, with a spiral staircase winding up to the lantern room.
The air smells of salt and old wood and candle wax.
Through narrow windows, I can see dark water stretching to the horizon, moonlight cutting a silver path across the surface.
The entire crew is here. I can hear Bryx somewhere below, telling a story that involves Kevin, a barrel of fermented nectar, and what he insists was a "consensual dance-off.
" Sarnyx's voice cuts in with something sharp and dismissive.
Nimor laughs, a rare sound, quiet and surprised.
Mora murmurs something I can't quite make out, and Bryx's response is so theatrical I can practically see him clutching his chest.
They're hiding out here. Lying low. From what, I don't know. Iteration Eight Elle's memories are hazy to me, filtered through the merge. But there's a feeling of safety in this place. Temporary, fragile, but real. A pocket of peace in whatever war this version of Wynmire is fighting.
A hand slides around me from behind.
I know that touch. Would know it in any iteration, any timeline, any version of reality.
"You're thinking too loudly," Kaelren murmurs against the back of my neck. His breath is warm. His lips graze the skin just below my ear. Iteration Eight Elle’s entire body responds. Her spine straightens. Her pulse quickens. Heat blooms at the point of contact, radiating outward.
This Kaelren is different. The corruption marks are there.
I feel them where his hands rest on my waist, slightly cooler than the surrounding flesh.
But there’s something softer about him. Less guarded.
The walls he normally keeps raised like fortifications are lowered, and what lies beneath is raw, open, achingly tender.
"I'm always thinking too loud," Iteration Eight Elle says with my mouth. I feel the smile form. "You knew that when you signed up."
"I didn't sign up." He turns me to face him. Moonlight from the window catches his features. Sharp jaw. Dark eyes looking at me like I'm the only solid thing in a dissolving world. "I was ambushed. By a redhead with a smart mouth, absolutely no sense of self-preservation."
"And you love it."
"I do." He says it simply. No hesitation. No deflection. Just the truth laid bare between us in the dark. "I love all of it. Every reckless, stubborn, beautiful part."
He kisses me. Not desperate, not world-ending. Slow. Deliberate. A kiss that says we have time, even when we probably don’t. His hands frame my face. Thumbs trace the line of my jaw. He kisses me like he’s trying to memorize the shape of my mouth.
I feel Iteration Eight Elle melt into it. Her hands slide up his chest, over the carved marks, feeling their texture beneath her fingertips. His breath catches when her fingers trace a line from his collarbone to the base of his throat. The sound sends a jolt of want through both of us.
"Upstairs," she whispers against his mouth.
He doesn’t need to be told twice. He hoists me into his arms, begins climbing the stairs, pressing kisses along my temple, my cheek.
The lantern room at the top of the lighthouse is all windows, sky.
The glass is old, thick, warped in places, turning the moonlight into something liquid, soft.
A makeshift bed sits on the floor, blankets, pillows piled into a nest of warmth in the cold stone room.
The lantern itself has been doused, leaving only moonlight, distant stars, the faint glow of my marks responding to his proximity.
He sets me down, undresses me slowly, like each piece removed is a revelation. He pushes the tunic off my shoulders, presses his mouth to the newly exposed skin, kissing across my collarbone, down the slope of my shoulder.
His hands follow, sliding the fabric down my arms. Where his fingers trail, my marks light up in response, golden warmth chasing the path of his touch.
"You're glowing," he says against my skin.
"Your fault."
"I'll take the blame." He pulls back just enough to look at me, and his expression makes my breath stutter. Not just desire. Reverence. Like he can't believe I'm standing here in front of him. Like he's grateful for it in a way that goes deeper than words.
He lifts me. Just picks me up, hands under my thighs, and I wrap my legs around his waist as he carries me to the pile of blankets. He lays me down gently and then he's over me, the weight of him warm and solid, and his mouth finds mine again.
This kiss is different. Hungrier. His tongue slides against mine, and I make a sound in the back of my throat that seems to undo something in him, because his hips press forward and I can feel exactly how much he wants this. Wants me.
I pull at his shirt, and he breaks the kiss long enough to drag it over his head.
The moonlight catches the corruption marks covering his torso, dark veins and carved lines that should be frightening but just look like him.
I trace them with my fingertips, following the patterns across his chest, his stomach, the ridges of muscle that tighten under my touch.
He watches me touch him with those dark, burning eyes, his breath uneven. When my fingers reach the waistband of his pants, he catches my hand and brings it to his lips. Kisses my palm. Kisses each fingertip. Then pins my wrist above my head and lowers his mouth to my throat.
He works his way down. Unhurried. Thorough.
His mouth on my collarbone, the curve of my breast, the peak that makes my back arch when he takes it between his lips.
His hand finds the other, thumb drawing slow circles that match the rhythm of his mouth, and I'm making sounds I couldn't control even if I wanted to.
"Tell me what you want," he says against my ribs, his breath hot on my skin.
"You. All of you. Stop being gentle."
Something shifts in his eyes. The tenderness remains, but it sharpens. He hooks his fingers into the waistband of my pants, strips them down my legs in one fluid motion. Then his mouth is on my hip, my inner thigh, then—
I gasp. Loud. My hand tangles in his hair. His tongue is unhurried, devastating, working me with a focus that borders on worship. He reads every sound I make, every shift of my hips, adjusts accordingly. Harder when I arch. Softer when I shake. Relentless when I'm close.