It was Cat’s love for Tyler that drove her to defend him. It’s my father’s love for me that drives the Ra’haam to try and connect with me, rather than to kill.
“I love you,” I say. “That’s what I came to tell you.”
But telling him here, now, like this—it isn’t enough.
I have to go deeper.
I have to go past the point of no return.
I have to do the thing I’ve dreaded, I see that now.
To fall in love is to surrender.
And I’m so afraid to lose myself, my hands shaking as I fumble with the rainbow strings at my wrist. They’re my path back home, my trail of breadcrumbs, my connection to everything.
Love shouldn’t ask you to give up everything else; that’s not how love works. But this is how the Ra’haam loves, and if I’m to fall deeply enough into it that I can show it a different way, a different kind of love …
One by one I untie them, tears streaming down my cheeks, and I’m laughing and crying as I release my anchors, but I know this is right, and it will be okay, it will be okay, it will be okay.
And the last string, Kal’s violet rimmed with gold, slithers away.
And I am free.
And it’s intoxicating.
I become a part of the Ra’haam, every part of my mind merging with it, spreading out with the glorious sensation of being loved and held and known, parts of me alive that I never imagined.
I live a thousand lives, a million lives, and I share mine, and we commune in glorious union.
And as I dissolve into them, I light that spark I knew I must—but I don’t set the Ra’haam on fire with grief and rage and anger.
I don’t burn it from the inside out.
Because now I know, this is the way. Not the way of the Eshvaren—every last one of them spent themselves in battle, and just one fragment of the Ra’haam survived, and so the battle began again.
This time, something has to be different.
And that something will be me.
So instead, I willingly spread my wings and become utterly a part of the Ra’haam, and I feel the million connections light up around me as I join with it, and I know it and it knows me, and we know ourselves, and I travel through it at the speed of light, and
we fall
deeper
deeper
deeper
in
love.
My love spreads like wildfire, and I share the story of Aurora Jie-Lin O’Malley, who boarded a ship to a new world and woke up two centuries later.
And I becomes we, and we tell ourself my stories as I sink further in.
We tell ourself the story of Tyler Jericho Jones, son of a warrior and a Waywalker, who found us sleeping in the stars.
Saedii Gilwraeth, daughter of a warrior and a Waywalker herself, who learned a new way to see the world.
Finian de Karran de Seel, who was told by the world that he was not enough, and showed the world he was everything.
Scarlett Isobel Jones, who had a heart so large it could beat for her friends when theirs threatened to fail.
Kaliis Idraban Gilwraeth, who bore up under fists and taunts, who swore to serve even those who would never love him back, because it was right.
Zila Madran, who made a new life and brought us this one, her love paving the way for ours.
Catherine “Zero” Brannock, who is a part of us, who never flinched, never stopped fighting, or loving.
Caersan, Archon of the Unbroken, Slayer of Stars, who was unforgivable, and yet who loved.
We tell ourself all our stories, large and small, light and dark, and together we see every color of our rainbow. And there is one tiny part of us that is still me, not we, and I keep it alive just a few moments longer so I can speak.
It’s not about the sum of the rainbow’s parts, I tell them, though it’s beautiful together. It’s about every shade within it, each of them beautiful on their own. These stories are about the way each of these people lived and loved, sometimes wisely and well, sometimes foolishly, sometimes in dark and terrible ways. But each of their journeys was their own.
Love should never ask you to give up the things that make you different. The truths that can only be told about you, and nobody else.
And just as the last parts of me dissolve into the Ra’haam, as my memory of I fades out, giving way to a beautiful, irresistible we, it begins… .
My love spreads through us like joyous wildfire, and I watch as
one
by
one
the stories of the Ra’haam awaken, blinking into existence like coals in a fire that seemed to have died.
Like a galaxy full of stars, coming alive one by one.
The Ra’haam—or rather, each and every part of it—is remembering what it’s like to be they, not it.
What it’s like to be I, not we.
And in this moment, it remembers love cannot be demanded, or taken.
Only given.
It remembers that love offers a choice.
That love is a choice, one we make over and over again.
We want that choice, I tell it as the last parts of me merge with ecstatic joy. We are that choice.
And slowly, in a moment that takes an eternity, the lights twinkle back in answer. Each and every one of them, now a little closer to the person they were before they merged, before they became us. From one small light, then two, then millions, the answer comes back to me.
We … understand.
And because it is—no, they are—no, we are—so many, and have lived millions of lives, we know what we have to do.
Abruptly I’m back in my body, aboard the Neridaa. I’m lying on the floor, staring up at the crystal ceiling. But I’m also still with the Ra’haam, still a part of an extraordinary, unstoppable us that I will never leave, and it’s glorious.
This wasn’t just a price worth paying. This is the most beautiful experience of my life.
Kal is sitting by my side, and his head snaps up, eyes wet, cheeks streaked with tears.
“You have returned,” he gasps, lifting my fingers to his lips, hope dawning slowly.
“For a little,” I whisper, still smiling.
I can feel the Ra’haam fleet, I can sense the rest of me out there in the black, and I want to burst like a dandelion and let every part of me blow away, sinking into the us that awaits. Into the millions of lives and loves that are a part of me now. Together, forever.
“What does that mean?” Kal asks softly. “For a little?”
“It means we have to go, soon.” My own eyes are wet too, but my tears aren’t all sad. I love him so much. I ache at the thought of leaving him. But I will never be alone.
“Where will we go?” he asks.
“Not us,” I say, letting my mind twine with his one last time, midnight blue and silver, violet and gold. “Not you and me.”
And he sees.
The Ra’haam will go, and I am the Ra’haam, so I will go too.
“Please, do not leave me,” he whispers, voice cracking, grip on my fingers tightening.
“You could come with us,” I murmur.
He helps me silently to my feet, and together we watch as a single ship breaks away from the Ra’haam, and a single shuttle from the Legion fleet, each of them arcing its way through the others suspended mid-battle, homing in on the city-sized Weapon that was never going to be enough.
Together Kal and I walk down toward the docking bay, past the place where in the future our friends and family died defending us, our hands joined.
I’m going to miss him so very much.
They’re all waiting for us when we get there.
Fin and Scarlett, Tyler and Saedii, each of them wary, hopeful, ranging from smiling to scowling. The ones who carried me here. And next to them stands my father, who smiles slowly and holds out his arms.
I break into a run, and this feeling I thought would never be mine again is, and can be forever now, and as I rest my head on his shoulder and he holds me tight, I am so deeply contented that I want to live in this moment always.
And I can, I can.
But the others don’t need to, because love offers choice.
I … I remember I didn’t want to leave Kal.
But this was my choice, to join the Ra’haam, so I could help us understand why this battle had to end. And I cannot regret it.
It’s Scarlett who eventually breaks the silence.
“Aurora? What’s going on?”