“Varek!” Kael reaches me, blades wet, eyes bright. “The line’s holding,” he says. “We can finish this.”
I look towards the forest. The sky pulses again, and even here, the air carries that wrongness.
Pax.
I don’t hesitate. “I have to go.”
The words carry guilt before I even process it. I am leaving my fighters. Leaving the field. Leaving the dead and the dying and the ones still standing.
Kael follows my gaze, understanding hitting him instantly. “It’s Pax,” he says.
“Yes.”
He looks back at the fight, then at me. “I know,” he says.
“Hold it,” I say.
Kael bares his teeth. “Go.”
I run. I move because if I don’t, I will break where I stand.
The forest swallows me whole.
Branches tear at my arms. Roots try to trip me. I don’t slow. The storm builds overhead, lightning ripping through the sky in violent bursts.
Blue flickers between the flashes.
Not this world’s blue. Earth. The sight hits harder than any blow.
Pax.
His home.
I feel it in the bond—his pull towards it, the ache of it, the weight of ten years of wanting.
And something else.
Hesitation.
Conflict.
Me.
The bond strains harder. He’s choosing.
I run faster.
The clearing opens ahead, and I swallow hard. The sky is broken.
The rift hangs there, vast and unstable, edges tearing inward even as it holds. Through it, I see blue. Real blue. Clouds. A horizon.
It is shrinking, and Pax is close. I feel him.
The bond is unbearable now, stretched between us, full of fear and something like grief.
I am too late. I feel it in my heart, my soul, my very being.
The rift contracts again.
