"Come with me," I gasp. "Together. I want—"
He adjusts his angle, slides a hand between us, finds the bundle of nerves with his thumb, presses, and I’m gone. I come so hard I see stars bursting behind my eyelids, my body seizing around him. He follows me over the edge with a groan torn from somewhere deep inside him, hips stuttering, his whole body going rigid against mine.
We collapse together. A tangle of sweaty limbs, heaving breaths, marks slowly dimming from their peak glow. He rolls to his side, pulls me against him. I press my face into his chest, listen to his heartbeat gradually slow.
Neither of us speaks for a long time. We don’t need to. His hand traces idle patterns on my back. I feel Iteration Eight Elle’s contentment like a warm weight in my chest. This version of her is happy. Truly, deeply happy.
For a few stolen minutes, I get to feel that too.
Later, Kaelren is asleep. I feel his breathing, slow and deep, his arm still draped over my waist. But Iteration Eight Elle is restless.
She slips out from under his arm carefully, pulls on his discarded shirt. It smells like him, like wood-smoke and that dark-spice scent that is Kaelren in every iteration, and pads barefoot down the spiral staircase.
The night air hits her skin when she steps outside, cold and sharp with salt. The lighthouse sits on a rocky outcrop, a narrow stone walkway leading to the edge where the cliff drops straight down to the ocean below. The water is dark and churning, waves crashing against the rocks fifty feet below.
Peeble is already there.
They're perched on the stone railing at the edge of the walkway, wings folded, their jewel-encrusted shell catching the moonlight in tiny prisms of color. They're just quietly sitting, looking out at the water.
Peeble being quiet is unsettling. In any iteration.
"Can't sleep?" I ask, settling down beside them.
"Beetles don't sleep. We enter a state of contemplative magnificence that merely resembles sleep to the untrained observer." A pause. "But no. I couldn't. Too much in my head."
"Yeah, tell me about it."
We sit in silence for a moment, the sound of waves filling the space between us. The ocean below is dark and endless; the horizon is a blurred line where water meets sky.
"I just want everyone to be safe," I say finally. "That's all I want. Kaelren, Bryx, Mora, Sarnyx—all of them. I want them to have lives that aren't defined by running from something. I want them to be happy."
Peeble turns one of their compound eyes toward me. "You know what's funny about the ocean, Elle?"
"That it's wet?"
"That it's terrifying." They gesture with one tiny leg toward the water below. "All that depth. All that unknown. You can't see what's in it. You don't know what's down there. Every logical instinct tells you to stay up here where it's safe and solid and you can see the ground beneath your feet." They shift on the railing. "But the ocean doesn't care about your logic. The ocean just is. And the only way to get where you need to go is to stop standing on the edge and throw yourself in."
I stare at them. "Since when are you philosophical?"
"I contain multitudes, Elle. Sparkling, bedazzled multitudes." They preen one wing. "I'm just saying. Sometimes the safe choice and the right choice are not the same thing. Sometimes you've got to jump and trust that the water will catch you."
Jump.
The word lands on me like a physical weight.
Take the leap of faith.
Thalia's voice echoes in my head, sharp and urgent. When the time comes, you must take the leap of faith. Don't hesitate. Don't think. Just jump. There are no more chances.
I look at Peeble. I look at the ocean below. I look up at the sky, at the stars scattered across it like spilled sugar on a dark tablecloth.
Oh.
Oh!
The lighthouse. The cliff. The water below. This is it. This is the leap Thalia was talking about. This is where I jump.
My heart hammers. I stand up, and Iteration Eight Elle's body responds, confused, resisting. She doesn't understand why we're standing. She doesn't understand why I'm looking at the cliff's edge with purpose instead of fear.
