"What? Haven't you ever heard that phrase before? A leap of faith?"
The words ring through me like a bell. Thalia's face in the alley. Her urgent eyes.Leap of faith.
This can't be it. Not now. Not after this. Not when I'm inside a body that knows what it is to hold her without grief, to love her without the shadow of loss darkening every touch.
But my body knows. That deeper part of me, it knows. This is the moment. This is the door.
I look at her one last time. I memorize her face in the moonlight. The freckles, the curve of her lips, the way her eyeshold mine like she can see every version of me at once and loves them all.
I kiss her. Slow, deep, with everything I have. I pour every iteration into it. Every failure, every loss, every time I held her and let go and vowed to find her again. When I pull back, I press my forehead to hers.
"I'm coming for you," I tell her.
Then I gently push her back from the rail's edge, turn, and dive toward the dark waters below.
Just before I break the surface, a small, shiny object comes flying out of a porthole and collides with my chest. Peeble.
I don't even have time to yell at them before the sea swallows us whole. The cold hits like a fist, and the darkness closes in, and somewhere above me I hear her call my name.
But I'm already gone, falling through the dark toward whatever comes next, because she is somewhere out there in the vast machinery of time, and I will find her.
I will always find her.
Icome up gasping.
Water closes over my head and then releases me, warm and buoyant, and I break the surface with a ragged inhale that tastes like salt and flowers. My arms pinwheel and my legs kick against a current that isn’t fighting me so much as nudging me in a direction it’s already chosen. I cough, spit water, blink against light so bright it feels like someone turned the sun up too high.
I pause for a second and just float. The water is warm; the temperature adjusting to my body as I move through it. I can feel the bottom now, smooth stone under my feet. I look around andspot something in the distance. I half-walk, half-wade toward what I think is the shore.
It is a shore, and it’s insane.
Color hits me first. So much of it that my eyes struggle to settle on any one thing.
The sand shifts under my feet. Pale gold in one step, soft pink in the next as the light moves across it. Behind me the water stretches out in a clear, deep teal, the surface calm enough to reflect the sky.
Ahead, the land opens into a sweep of vivid green.
Trees rise in wide, slow arcs; their trunks smooth and copper-bright. Branches spread overhead, heavy with blossoms I’ve never seen before. Thick clusters of petals bloom in shades of coral and tangerine, while others open in an eye-catching deep violet.
The whole place feels intensely alive.
For a moment I simply stand there, taking it in while my mind catches up with what my eyes are seeing.
I stagger onto dry sand and stand there dripping, water streaming off my clothes and pooling around me.
Something brushes my arm. I flinch out of reflex, but it’s only a flower.
A large bloom on a low vine has crept all the way to the edge of the sand. Its petals are pale pink, fading to butter yellow near the center. As I watch, the flower slowly opens wider and turns toward me, adjusting its angle as if following my movement.
Warmth spreads from it. Actual heat.
Where the petals touch my skin, the water evaporates, leaving the surface dry.
The flower is drying me.
I stand there and let it happen because, honestly, a sentient flower towel is the least weird thing that’s happened to me this week.
The warmth spreads as more blossoms along the vine open and turn toward me. One after another, their petals shift in my direction, each giving off a steady heat that seeps through my clothes and into my skin.
