In less than two minutes, if all goes well, the pulse will strike them. The last of Squad 312 will be two centuries away, forever beyond my reach.
Except that is not true. Everything I do will reach them, eventually.
We watch the shuttle soar into the tempest.
Nari presses her hand to the glass.
“Godspeed,” she whispers as the ship is obscured by the storm. “And good hunting.”
One minute.
I turn toward her, studying the features that have become so familiar as we lived this day together over and over again. I know so much about her, and yet so little. I have the rest of my life to learn.
“I know they’ve left you behind,” Nari whispers, her eyes locked on mine. “But they haven’t left you alone.”
There are sparks in her words, and they jump between us like static electricity, like tiny quantum lightning strikes. And as they hit, I am like the shuttle, and I am transformed and transported, I am somewhere new, and …
I lift my hand, and so slowly, so carefully, I brush my fingertips down her cheek, curve them around the back of her neck.
Her skin is warm.
She is so brave, and so fierce, this hawk.
So full of life, tied by a thousand bonds to her friends, her family, her world.
And she is beautiful, the lines of her face, the curve of her mouth. I can hear Scarlett’s voice in my mind, rich and amused. She is not tall.
And I am not alone.
I am with her.
It takes only the faintest pressure of my fingertips against the back of her neck, and she is leaning in, and her lips are brushing mine, and in a few moments the pulse will strike outside, but here, I am already afire.
Scarlett—one minute remaining
I wish I was the sort of person who prayed.
But Finian’s chest is moving slowly, and I’m watching him, counting down, counting down. My hands are steady on the flight controls. There’s nothing to do but wait.
I don’t know what we’ll find when we get home. I don’t know if we’ll get home at all. But I know I’ve done everything I can.
I glance through the viewscreen at the storm raging outside, and when I look back down at him, his dark eyes are open.
“Stay still,” I say immediately. “Stay still. We’re going to need to get you to a real doctor pretty soon.”
His brows lift, but he doesn’t try to speak.
“Not yet,” I continue. “A few seconds more. Assuming you’re asking if we made the jump. If you’re asking where I found the skill, courage, and general fabulousness to perform emergency surgery in the middle of all this chaos, well. If you think that after auditioning all those guys to find the perfect boyfriend I was going to let a little thing like a tracheotomy get in the way of true love, you’ve clearly underestimated how tired I am of the search.”
His mouth quirks weakly.
I glance up at the clock again.
This is it.
I’ve done everything I can.
The sail stretches out below us, metallic, rippling, a thousand kilometers wide. The storm around us, endless, impossible, the power to tear through the walls of space and time gathering around us. The crystal at my throat begins to burn. Black light. White noise. I can feel it on my skin. I can hear it in my head. We’re so small, so insignificant in the face of all this, I wonder for a moment how any of it matters at all.
Finian looks up at me with those big black eyes I used to think were hard to read. And as our gazes lock, I realize it’s this.
This is what matters.
“See you in the future, handsome.”
ZAP.
33
AURI
I’m half in one world, half in another, images overlaying each other so that the Echo and reality meld together.
There are tears on Lae’s cheeks, and filthy, muddy rain is falling from the Echo sky, and tiny cracks are spiderwebbing through the Neridaa all at once.
I reach within myself for the power to turn the black rain sweet and crystal clear, and Kal lifts one hand to brush a tear from Lae’s cheek, and a moment’s sweetness holds in his world and mine amid this carnage.
“We will fight to our last breath to honor your father,” he says, gentle, and Lae squares her jaw and nods.
“Yes, Uncle.”
But the collapsed crystal rubble that Caersan brought down to block the doorway won’t keep the Ra’haam out much longer, and his wounds run across the landscape of the Echo like a black blight, and as quick as it came, that moment of respite is gone from the Echo and the Neridaa both.
The cry of warning I sent back to Tyler still rings in my mind, a discordant shriek that won’t fade away.
He told me himself.
When it happens.
How it happens.
Every planetary head gathered together in one place.
A Ra’haam agent with a bomb.
The death and disorder that paralyzed them until the Ra’haam could bloom and burst and turn everything blue and green and deathless.
Did he hear me back then? Did he stop it?
Would we still be here if he had?
Another jagged canyon opens up across the Echo, the pain of it like broken glass dragged across my insides, and I reach out one more time to where Caersan stands like a blood-soaked statue in black.
“Caersan, I can’t do it alone. You have to fix this, please.”
And his hands make fists, and he turns toward me with wildness in his eyes, and he raises his voice to a roar.
“I. AM. NOT. BROKEN.”
—and the barrier in the doorway gives way in a spray of crystal shards, and Kal and Lae turn to face their foe for the last time. New bonds of love flow between them now, her rainbow glory tangling with his violet and gold, because Kal is not his father, and he knows how to offer love, and Tyler taught her to accept it, and
—a Syldrathi boy is thrown against a wall, his father looming over him as he falls to the ground.
I cry out for Kal, but the boy turns his head to stare straight at me, and
the
boy
is
not
Kal
—and the crystal city of the Echo is shattering and falling
—and I can hear my own voice begging Caersan to help me as I frantically repair the Neridaa as she unmakes herself over and over
—and the waves of death outside pour through the door, and Kal’s blades are a blur, and Ra’haam tendrils lash out to wrap around Lae’s legs, dragging her down and swarming all over her thrashing body
—and Caersan is hacking and slashing at the growths around him, and the pressure is building, hammering against my temples, cracks running down my face as the light pulses through them, and I think I’m screaming
—and Lae’s mind is bright, and in it I can see Saedii’s tae-sai gaming table, and I understand her mother loved to play against Tyler, and she taught her daughter, and I see the regret and defiance in Lae’s mind as she wrenches one arm free of the Ra’haam
—and Kal and Caersan shout, but in all our minds she tips her wooden Templar piece to signal the game is over, and with her free arm she gets her pistol up, and like her mother, she denies the Ra’haam its quarry
—and as she pulls the trigger and the rainbow brilliance of her mind is gone, Kal falls to one knee, and I wrap my mind in his, and I can hear myself screaming as he shows me one last time how much he loves me, because if we can go back, Tyler will still live, Toshh and Dacca and Elin will still live, one day Lae will be born, but if Kal dies here and now, I lose him forever.
With a roar, Caersan attacks the Ra’haam as it brings down his son, but for every vine he hacks away, another takes its place. He knows no victory lies this way. I can feel it.
“Fight!” he screams, and I don’t know who he’s talking to anymore. He swings his blade again, unable to surrender, refusing to let go.
“Caersan!” I cry. “This is not the fight! Heal the Neridaa with me!”
And he looks up, his face splintered and cracked, the light almost blinding …
—and then he stands in the Echo with me in a field of crystal flowers, and once more I’m in two worlds, three worlds, four worlds, so many times and places …
—a boy tries to understand why his father is angry
—the boy’s son tries to understand why his father is angry
—“Imagine what we could have made, if only you had loved us.”