Chapter 14
Icome up gasping.
Water closes over my head and then releases me, warm and buoyant, and I break the surface with a ragged inhale that tastes like salt and flowers.
My arms pinwheel and my legs kick against a current that isn’t fighting me so much as nudging me in a direction it’s already chosen.
I cough, spit water, blink against light so bright it feels like someone turned the sun up too high.
I pause for a second and just float. The water is warm; the temperature adjusting to my body as I move through it. I can feel the bottom now, smooth stone under my feet. I look around and spot something in the distance. I half-walk, half-wade toward what I think is the shore.
It is a shore, and it’s insane.
Color hits me first. So much of it that my eyes struggle to settle on any one thing.
The sand shifts under my feet. Pale gold in one step, soft pink in the next as the light moves across it. Behind me the water stretches out in a clear, deep teal, the surface calm enough to reflect the sky.
Ahead, the land opens into a sweep of vivid green.
Trees rise in wide, slow arcs; their trunks smooth and copper-bright. Branches spread overhead, heavy with blossoms I’ve never seen before. Thick clusters of petals bloom in shades of coral and tangerine, while others open in an eye-catching deep violet.
The whole place feels intensely alive.
For a moment I simply stand there, taking it in while my mind catches up with what my eyes are seeing.
I stagger onto dry sand and stand there dripping, water streaming off my clothes and pooling around me.
Something brushes my arm. I flinch out of reflex, but it’s only a flower.
A large bloom on a low vine has crept all the way to the edge of the sand. Its petals are pale pink, fading to butter yellow near the center. As I watch, the flower slowly opens wider and turns toward me, adjusting its angle as if following my movement.
Warmth spreads from it. Actual heat.
Where the petals touch my skin, the water evaporates, leaving the surface dry.
The flower is drying me.
I stand there and let it happen because, honestly, a sentient flower towel is the least weird thing that’s happened to me this week.
The warmth spreads as more blossoms along the vine open and turn toward me. One after another, their petals shift in my direction, each giving off a steady heat that seeps through my clothes and into my skin.
Within a minute, I’m dry. My hair, my shirt, my pants. Everything.
“Thanks,” I say to the flowers.
I was raised to have manners, even when the thing helping me is a plant.
The plants begin to reveal a path ahead.
Ferns draw their fronds back. Low bushes shift their branches aside. A thick vine pulls away from the ground, sliding back on itself until the soil beneath it is clear.
Underneath, smooth stepping stones appear. Pale, flat, and evenly spaced.
They lead inland.
I take a step. Then another.
As I move down the path, the plants on either side lean toward me. Leaves tilt in my direction. Vines shift closer, brushing lightly against my arms as I pass.
It feels like a welcome. Like the greenery is reaching out, the way a dog presses its head under your hand, asking to be touched.
A trailing vine brushes my shoulder, and I feel a small pulse of energy pass between us. My marks answer immediately, a faint hum under my skin. My golden veins flickers once, soft and steady. The vine trembles in response.
This place feels right.
Not safe. I’ve stopped trusting that word.
But right in a way nothing has felt since Jo’s garden. The same quiet sense of belonging. Of being known by the ground beneath my feet.
Like the earth here recognizes me.
The path curves through a grove of copper-trunked trees. Their canopy filters the light above me, breaking it into shifting patterns that move across the stepping stones.
The air smells sweet and green. Beneath that is something deeper and older. Rain on soil. The rich earthy scent of Jo’s compost pile in midsummer.
The air itself feels dense with life.
It vibrates at the same quiet frequency as the hum in my marks.
Then I hear it.
“—telling you, if we wait much longer, I’m going to start a monologue about my feelings, and nobody wants that.”
I stop walking. My heart stops with me.
That voice.
I know that voice.
I’ve heard it complain about sleeping conditions, critique my fashion choices, narrate my emotional state like a nature documentary, and deliver dramatic death scenes that later turned out to be performances.
“Peeble?”
The word comes out cracked. Barely a whisper. I clear my throat and try again.
“PEEBLE!”
A buzz cuts through the grove.
I catch a flash of iridescent wings in the light breaking through the canopy. A small shape rockets out of the trees, moving far too fast for something that size, and then I see them.
My Peeble.
The real one.
Their shell gleams like it’s been dipped in liquid gemstones. Their compound eyes are wide, antennae locked straight up in what I’ve learned means maximum emotional distress.
“ELLE!” they shriek. The sound echoes through the grove.
“Oh, thank the goddess. Finally! Do you have any idea what I have been through? The boats, Elle. The smell. The seasickness.” Their wings buzz as they hover in front of my face.
“I was inside Kaelren’s collar. Do you know what the inside of that man’s collar smells like after weeks of interdimensional travel? Do you?”
I’m laughing. I’m crying. Both at the same time, which is messy and undignified, and I don’t care even slightly. Peeble dive-bombs my shoulder and clings there, their tiny legs gripping the fabric of my shirt, their shell vibrating against my neck.
“I missed you,” I say, and my voice does that embarrassing thing where it cracks right in the middle. “I missed you so much.”
“As you should have. I am irreplaceable.”
They nuzzle against my jaw, and their shell is warm.
“But we can discuss the depth of your longing later,” they add quickly, pulling back. “Because there’s someone else who’s been even more insufferable about missing you than I have, and I didn’t think that was possible.”
I look up.
He’s standing at the end of the path where the trees open into a clearing filled with golden light.
Tall. Dark. Completely still.
Exactly the way I remember him. The way I’ve remembered him through every iteration, every body, every broken stretch of time I’ve stumbled through.
Silver eyes.
The corruption marks along his jaw.
That posture that somehow communicates controlled power and the emotional availability of a brick wall.
But his face.
His face is doing something I’ve only seen a handful of times in the entire span of our relationship, and most of those times involved me being in mortal danger.
His expression is open.
Cracked.
The walls he keeps up with such careful precision are gone, and what’s left underneath looks raw and shaken. He’s staring at me like I’m the only thing in any realm that matters.
“Kaelren.”
His name comes out steady. No crack. No hesitation. Just his name, filling the space between us.
I run.
I don’t think about it. I don’t measure the distance or worry about tripping over my feet on the stepping stones. I don’t consider whether I should try to look composed after being scattered across seventeen versions of reality.
I just run.
Full sprint. Arms pumping. Sand, stone, and soft earth flying under my feet.
He moves at the same time I do.
And the fact that Kaelren, who does not do public displays of anything except intimidation, is coming toward me at a pace that could generously be called urgent tells me everything I need to know.
I hit him at full speed.
My arms go around his neck. My legs wrap around his waist. He catches me like he expected it, his arms locking around me as if this moment has been rehearsed a thousand times.
One hand presses into the small of my back. The other tangles in my hair.
He’s holding me so tight I can feel his heartbeat against my sternum.
I kiss him.
Hard. Messy. Graceless and desperate. Salt on my tongue because we’re both crying, and neither of us will acknowledge it. Not now. Not ever. Not even under threat of death.
His mouth is warm. Familiar.
The bond in my chest ignites like a struck match. The golden thread between us, stretched thin across iterations, timelines, and the void, pulls tight and flares with sudden strength.
For the first time in what feels like forever, everything in me settles.
“Found you,” he says against my mouth, his voice gravel and grief and relief tangled together.
“You’re late,” I say, because I’m me and I can’t help it.
“I was busy jumping through half a dozen iterations of reality to find you.”
“Excuses.”
He makes a sound that is almost a laugh. Almost.
Then he presses his forehead to mine.
His silver eyes are bright and glassy. The corruption marks along his jaw pulse in time with my own marks. Gold and black moving together, rising and fading in the same rhythm.
“Never do that again,” he says, rough with restraint.
“Do what? Save the entire realm?”
“Leave me.”
The words hang between us, stripped of everything except what it means. Not a command. Not even a request. Just the raw truth of what it cost him.
“I didn’t leave you,” I say softly, pressing my palm to his chest where the locket rests under his shirt. I can feel it humming against my hand, warm and alive. “I was always right here.”
“AHEM.”
We both freeze.
“AHEM, I said.”
Peeble’s voice cuts in from about three inches away.
They’ve relocated from my shoulder to a branch at eye level, their compound eyes locked on us with the focused stare of someone who has been ignored for thirty straight seconds and considers it a personal offense.
“Excuse me. Hello. I’m here too. In case anyone was wondering. The beetle. The one who has been your emotional support insect through this entire interdimensional nightmare.”
They shift their wings with a sharp little buzz.