"There's no need to call your friend, Phoebe. He never understood you the way I do."
Thorne stopped breathing.
Then Phoebe's voice. "You're right." She sounded warm. Agreeable. "You're the one who's here right now. Not him. Before we go, we should promise ourselves to each other in front of the Eternal Pine. This moment deserves to be witnessed."
His truth-sense screamed through the distortion:Performed.It was the most controlled piece of acting Phoebe Calloway had ever produced, built for one purpose: to be heard on the other end of this channel by the one person who knew the difference between her real voice and her stage voice.
Gavin Hale’svoice brightened with joy. Pure, radiant, genuine joy so real Thorne's sense registered it as the most authentic emotion the man had ever felt, unperformed and absolute and blazing with conviction.
"Yes," the journalist’s voice was soft with wonder. "Yes. This sacred moment should be witnessed." Then, close and gentle, "We don't need this anymore."
The clatter of the comm hitting the floor.
The crunch of it under a foot.
Silence.
Thorne ran.
The festival was between him and the Pine. Market lanes, the square, the long stretch past the shuttered vendor stalls. His boots hit the cobblestones and frost cracked outward from every footfall, spreading in jagged lines across the stones behind him, the temperature dropping so sharply in his wake that stall awnings stiffened and creaked, canvas going rigid with sudden cold, and the breath of a late-night couple ten feet behind himcrystallized in the air and hung there like suspended glass. The cold was rolling off him in waves he made no effort to control. Every ounce of discipline he owned was in his legs and his lungs and the distance closing between his body and the Pine.
A vendor looked up from locking his stall. Stepped back. The metal padlock in his hand frosted over.
Festivalgoers on the lane turned and pressed against the walls, instinct moving them before understanding arrived, clearing a path for the security officer running flat-out through the market with winter pouring off him.
At the bakery, the door swung wide.
Kaelor filled the frame, flour still on his hands. He pulled his apron off, dropped it on the threshold, and followed.
The heat radiating from Kaelor's body hit Thorne's frost trail, and steam erupted between them like two weather systems colliding on the cobblestones, ice and warmth, the visible manifestation of two men moving with the same purpose in opposite temperatures. Kaelor's stride was longer, and his bulk carved through the crowd like a ship's prow, and the vendors who hadn't already cleared the way cleared it now.
Finn appeared from a side street.
Young, lean, moving at a dead sprint with his hand on his security comm and his ice-blue eyes wide and sharp. He'd been on overnight patrol. He'd heard the emergency ping relay through the security channel. The frost on his own uniform crackled and spread as he fell into formation beside Thorne, three strides for every two of Thorne's, and he didn't ask what happened because the look on his commanding officer's face was answer enough.
He rounded the last corner.
The Pine's clearing opened before him.
And there she was.
twenty
. . .
Gavin Hale’sgrip on her elbow was gentle, and his voice was warm. He talked the whole time they walked. He told her about the apartment he'd found near a studio in Brooklyn. The front row seat he'd keep at every show. He described private concerts. Just the two of them. Her real voice, the one she kept locked away from audiences, given freely to the one person who deserved it.
"You won't have to perform anymore," he said, and his thumb stroked a small circle on the inside of her elbow, and Phoebe kept her breathing even and her face composed and did not scream.
The Eternal Pine rose ahead of them at the end of the lane. The tree had been the backdrop of every moment that mattered since she'd landed on this planet. The opening ceremony. The night Ember told her Kaelor was her mate. The day Elder Mira told her she belonged. The night she’d kissed Thorne in the middle of the village and he asked her to come home with him.
If Thorne had heard her through the comm before it was crushed, he was coming.
If he hadn't heard her, she was walking toward a sacred tree with a man whose sincerity was the most terrifying thing about him.
The Pine's clearing opened around them. The tree's trunk was massive up close, the bark deeply ridged, the bioluminescent glow casting the ground in shifting green-gold light that made the vanilla snow look like falling sparks. The roots spread across the clearing in ancient patterns, and the journalist led her to the center and turned to face her. His eyes were bright and full of something that looked exactly like love.
"I know you," he said. "Better than anyone else has ever known you before."
