“You know what I mean.”
I do. And she is right. The ritual’s physical components are simple. It is the emotional component—the vulnerability, the trust, the choice—that is impossible.
She laughs, and I realize the permanent bond does not frighten me. The possibility that she might choose to walk away after, even without the bond, does.
RIANNE
The soup sits heavy in my stomach, a knot of expired sodium and dread. Our conversation about the “essence exchange” has left a new kind of tension in the air. We know the mechanics. We just failed at them.
I pace away from the break room, frustrated, my path taking me through Fiction, past Poetry. “It’s not enough,” I say, mostly to myself. “We’re just... guessing.”
I end up at the circulation desk, glaring at the Chronicle. It lies there, but there’s something different—the cover is warmer than before, almost pulsing.
Stenrik is across the main reading area, methodically reinforcing the ice barrier on the eastern windows. I can feel his attention on me even from this distance—a low-level awareness I’m starting to recognize.
I’m agitated, needing to do something, needing answers.
“We know what you want,” I mutter at the book, planting my hands on the desk next to it. “Why won’t you tell us how ?”
I’m angry. At the book, at Stenrik for his impossible calm, at myself for being trapped here. On impulse, I slam my hand down on the book’s cover.
“Show me,” I demand, my voice too loud in the quiet. “We failed. Show me what we’re doing wrong.”
The cover is warm. I’ve felt that before. But this time, the warmth intensifies, sinking into my palm, climbing up my arm like fire. It burns. I try to pull my hand away but it’s stuck, locked to the cover. The symbols on the page begin to glow, not with the faint, steady light from before, but with an insistent, silver-blue pulse.
“Stenrik,” I say, but my voice sounds distant, wrong. The warmth is spreading into my chest, wrapping around my ribs like a vise.
Across the library, he turns sharply. He’s moving toward me, but everything is slowing down, dreamlike.
The symbols lift off the page.
I try to stumble back, but my hand is fused to the cover. The symbols aren’t just symbols anymore; they’re tiny, swirling motes of light. They swarm in the air above the book, coalescing into two figures.
One tall, with pointed ears outlined in silver. One small, with wild hair that moves like smoke.
It’s us. I’m watching us.
My stomach drops.
The figures stand apart, shifting nervously. I watch as they try to move together. Their light sputters. One moves, the other hesitates. Their breathing is visibly out of sync. They reach for each other and the light between them dies, the figures dissolving into sparks.
A failure. Our failure. That was Stage One.
“They didn’t align,” I whisper.
The motes of light re-form. The figures try again. This time they move in perfect rhythm. They breathe in, their light brightens. They breathe out, it settles. They are perfectlymirrored. Their light flares, merging them into one brilliant, solid pillar.
Stage One: Synchronization. I understand.
The vision shifts. The pillar of light splits, returning to the two figures. They face each other, and I feel a wave of pure, cold anxiety from the book. One figure turns its back. The light between them dims, gutters, and dies.
Stage Two: Truth. And its failure.
The vision shifts a final time. The figures turn back, facing each other. They don’t just align; they move toward each other, a deliberate, willing motion. They reach out. The light between them erupts, a blinding, permanent nova that solidifies, connecting them with a cord of pure energy.
Stage Three: Choice.
The vision evaporates. The symbols settle back onto the page, looking like flat, dead ink. My hand is suddenly my own again, released. I sway. The library tilts violently to the left.
