I’m already running.
Elle runs beside me. “That portal isn’t mine,” she says, and there’s no anger in it. Just understanding. “The gate opened for you. The Rootline is routing you forward.”
“Your Kaelren—”
“Will get through now that the parasite’s dead. I can already feel him on the other side. He’s about to punch through the gate and probably the wall behind it.” She slows as we reach the elm, letting me pull ahead. “Go. Find your Elle.”
I stop. Turn back.
She’s standing in the ruins of the garden, sword at her side, hair catching the light from the portal. Marks glowing. Blood on her cheek from the thorn that caught her. She looks like a painting. She looks like every version of Elle that ever was—the warrior, the survivor, the woman who refuses to be broken regardless of which iteration tried to break her.
“Thank you,” I say.
She smiles. It’s a different smile than my Elle’s. Harder at the edges, more careful, but it reaches her eyes the same way.
“For what it’s worth,” she says, “your Elle is lucky. You’re… a significant upgrade.”
“I’ll tell my version she has competition,” Peeble calls from inside the portal.
I’d tell them to shut up, but there’s no time. The portal is narrowing, the light contracting. I take three steps, reach the threshold, and feel the pull of it, the Rootline dragging me forward, toward whatever comes next.
I look back one more time. Elle raises a hand. A salute. A farewell.
I step through.
The light swallows everything.
The portal spat us out underwater. Deep underwater. The pressure squeezes my chest before I can orient myself, and the cold is immediate. The kind that locks your muscles if you let it.
I open my eyes. The water is a murky blue-green, thick with silt and the lazy drift of river debris. Visibility extends maybe fifteen feet in any direction. I kick upward, lungs already burning, and that's when I see them.
Three figures hovering in the water ahead of me, maybe ten feet away. Females. Or what look like females from the waist up.Long hair drifting in the current like seaweed. Beautiful faces. High cheekbones, full lips, skin that shimmers faintly with an iridescent sheen that catches the muted light filtering down from the surface.
They're smiling at me. Waving, with slow, languid movements of their hands, like they've been expecting me and are genuinely delighted I showed up.
Then one of them opens her mouth.
She has rows of teeth. Three concentric rings of needle-thin points angled inward like hooks. Her jaw unhinges wider than any humanoid mouth should open, and the other two follow suit, their pretty smiles splitting into something that belongs in a trench I want no part of. Sirens.
I twist in the water and kick hard for the surface, pulling with both arms, corruption flaring along my forearms in response to the threat. The locket bounces against my chest with each stroke.
Something brushes my ankle. I kick harder.
A hand, cold, strong, with fingers that end in points instead of nails, wraps around my boot. I slam my other foot down on it and feel the grip loosen just enough. I surge upward, and the surface hits me like a wall of light and air. I break through, gasping, choking on water, and immediately take stock.
A river. Wide, slow-moving, bordered by dense forest on both sides. The banks are a mix of clay and rock, lined with willows whose branches trail in the current like fingers testing the temperature. Downstream, the water bends around a bluff. Beyond it the trees thin into farmland. Or the outskirts of a settlement.
I know this river.
The Primara. The main artery that runs through eastern Wynmire, feeding half the coastal settlements and most of the inland trade routes. I've traveled it many times, and even inthis iteration it looks the same. Wide, unhurried, deceptively peaceful for something that houses sirens in its depths.
A hand breaks the surface two feet to my left, grasping at air.
I swim. Hard, ugly strokes that sacrifice form for speed, angling toward the nearest bank. The clay is slick to the touch when I reach it, and I scramble up on all fours, fingers digging into the mud, hauling myself out of the water with the graceless desperation of someone who has no interest in being eaten today. I make it three feet up the bank before I allow myself to stop and breathe.
Three heads break the water in unison, those horrible mouths still open, clicking their teeth together in rapid succession. The sound carries across the water like a cascade of snapping bones. They can't leave the river. They know it. I know it. But they hover at the waterline, watching me with flat black eyes, waiting with the patient hunger of creatures who have nowhere else to be.
I roll onto my back and stare at the sky, clear blue, a single bird circling high overhead.
