The bitter, coppery tang on my tongue tells me it would be better not to argue. I conserve my strength as we settle beside the spine with Celine stretched across our laps. Runes bob in the molten column of magic, clustering as close to her as possible. They’re mesmerizing. I zone out, only jolting back to reality when I hear a feminine groan.
“R-Riven,” she gasps. “I-I need to tell you?—”
“Shh, I’m here, darling. I’m here.” I squeeze her fingers, desperate for her to open her eyes. “You’re okay.”
“No,” she moans. “I’m dying, and I never told you?—”
“Told me what?” I bring her bruised knuckles to my mouth and kiss them.
She sighs. “That I love you.”
I choke, my abused heart pounding against my ribs.
“Easy, baby, you’re going to give him a heart attack.” Luca strokes her cheek, and her eyes pop open.
“Luca, you’re not dead.”
He shakes his head. “I’m not. None of us are.”
“But the golden lights,” she murmurs, squinting with suspicion. “I always imagined that the eternal beyond was made of gold.”
“It may be, but we are not in the eternal beyond, my truth. We are visiting the spine,” Malach says. “Your father is dead. It’s over, Celine. It’s all over.”
I clear my throat. “And, in case you didn’t know this already, I love you, too.”
She blinks wildly, but her eyes are more alert. “Holy shit, Riven, your face.”
I wince. “I know. It was a bloody finale, but I’ll wash it off soon, I promise.”
“No, dude,” Ciprian sighs. “Your real face.”
My breath catches. I was in too much pain to check before, but something is different. My ability to shift is right whereit always is, but in the core of my body, there’s something new. Something unchangeable. A kernel of something that feels a lot like me.
It should be the greatest moment of my life.
But it pales in comparison to hearing Celine tell me she loves me.
“I can go get a mirror,” Alistair offers. “But my guess is your face is going to stick around this time.”
I shake my head and squeeze Celine’s hand. “No mirror,” I say. “I have everything I need right here.” The truth runes light up inside the spine, clustering as close to me as they can get. Their approval confirms my statement so irrefutably that my last fissure of doubt disappears.
I’m glad I have a face, but I never needed one. Luca was right about that. I became who I am without it, and no binding could erase me.
Ten stories up, someone bangs on the door.
Ciprian groans. “Should we answer that?”
Celine shakes her head, then drops it onto my shoulder. “They can wait a while longer. This moment is only for us, and I’m going to enjoy it for as long as possible.”
A single rose-gold rune floats down to hover over her head. It pulses faintly with approval, and I can’t help feeling as if all the pain we went through to get here was absolutely worth it.
EPILOGUE
An entry from the journal i used twice before deciding that journaling was not for me:
I don’t think I want to live by Fringe rules, or radiant tradition, or enclave edicts anymore—no matter how many times they update the damn things to be more inclusive. In fact, I don’t want to be on the enclave’s communication thread at all.
PS: Ciprian, if you dug this out of the trash to read it, tell your brother to take me off that damn text thread. I want to unsubscribe.
