"One timeline," she says after a full minute. "One continuous Rootline. No fractures. No parallel branches. No dead space." She lifts her hands from the soil and looks at them as if they've just told her something she's been waiting decades to hear. "The Heartwood's output is stable. Sustainable. It's feeding the Verdance and extending into the surrounding landscape, but not aggressively. Not the way it was during the siege cycles." She looks at Thalia. "The realm is whole."
Thalia nods. The weight of those words settles across her shoulders, and instead of adding to the burden, it lifts some of it. The realm is whole. Everything she's been fighting for has happened.
Eltrien arrives next, his marks blazing from a Rootline reading that apparently started the moment he regained consciousness. He confirms what Irielle felt. The chasms in Wynmire have closed. The sentient vegetation has calmed. The boundarybetween Wynmire and Earth has stabilized into what he calls "a healthy membrane with appropriate permeability," which is Eltrien's way of saying the door between worlds is closed but not locked.
"The Elm Gate," I say. "Is it still functional?"
"The elm tree in your grandmother's garden is the primary cross-point between realms," Eltrien says. "It survived the merge. The connection is stable. With proper channeling, passage between Wynmire and Earth is possible." He adjusts his spectacles, which survived a cross-dimensional teleportation and a siege and apparently can survive anything. "Your cousin will be able to visit."
Leo.
I find him in the inner ring, sitting on a bench with Sarah, both of them looking out through a gap in the tower walls at the meadow beyond. They're holding hands. Leo's face has the particular expression of a man who has been through hell and back.
He sees me coming and stands. He says nothing, just opens his arms.
I walk into them. He folds me against his chest, and his arms tighten, and for a moment he holds me. Tight, silent, the steady grip of a man who lost one family member and is making sure the others know they're not going anywhere.
"It's over," I say against his shirt.
"I know." His voice is thick. "Sarah explained most of it. I didn't understand half of what she said, but I understood the part where you're alive and the world isn't ending anymore."
"That's the important part."
"That's the only part." He pulls back and looks at me with those blue eyes that are so much like Grandma Jo's that it makes my throat tight every time. "Elle. You saved two realms. You grew flowers inside a monster and turned it into a garden."
I laugh. Sarah steps forward and puts her hand on my arm, and her brown eyes are calm and warm and carrying the particular steadiness that makes her exactly the right person for my cousin.
"Come home when you can," she says. "The house is waiting."
Grandma Jo's house. The garden. The elm tree.
"I will," I say. "I promise."
The crew gathers at the Heartwood throughout the morning. They come in ones and twos, drawn by the same gravity that draws everything in this world toward the center.
Sarnyx arrives first. She's already surveyed the Verdance's new perimeter and has opinions. "Tactically sound," she says, "assuming nobody builds anything on the eastern approach."
"There's already a tavern," Thalia says.
"Then move it."
"I'm not moving the Root and Vine. It's survived fifty-three sieges."
"It's a tactical liability."
"It's a morale asset."
They stare at each other, Sarnyx with her thorns half-extended and Thalia with her jaw set, and the resemblance between Thalia's stubbornness and her father's stubbornness has never been more obvious than in this moment where she is refusing to back down from the scariest woman in any realm.
"I like her," Sarnyx says to Kaelren.
"I know," he says.
Bryx arrives with Kevin, both of them covered in wildflower pollen from what appears to have been an extensive meadow exploration. Kevin has a garland of white flowers around his thorax that Bryx definitely made for him.
"The meadow is incredible," Bryx announces, spreading his arms wide. "The flowers are warm, the grass is soft, the bees here are enormous, and Kevin has already made three new friends.This is the greatest place that has ever existed, and I would like to formally request permanent residency."
"You've been here for forty minutes," Mora says from beside him.
