She has always understood him too easily.
Another violent impact slams into the shield. Cracks splinter across the blue Aether in branching fractures now, flickering dangerously with every passing heartbeat.
Time is gone.
And then Teddy sees it—Tarrakai banking sharply overhead. Dragonfire pouring from his jaws, as he weaves between strikes of Skyfire and silver-threaded shadows.
Teddy sees the angle. The trajectory. And the answer arrives instantly. Not survival—strategy. Because Teddy has never been the kind of man who mistakes survival for victory.
“Tarrakai,” Teddy says roughly, blood filling his mouth now. “Tell him to direct his dragonfire at the shield.”
He spits blood onto the fractured earth again, and torques his hips to offset the force of Nyrielle’s strikes.
Seren goes completely still.
Horror floods her face.
“No.”
“If dragonfire hits the shield directly, I’ll redirect the blast.”
Understanding hits her with brutal clarity.
Into Nyrielle.
The shield trembles violently again as another collision of magic detonates across its surface.
Nyrielle’s lilting voice tries to reach him through the chaos. Taunts and teases that he knows are true. Promising death. Promising failure. Promising that love has always been humanity’s greatest weakness.
Seren shakes her head. “And what of you?” she asks, voice breaking apart around the words.
Teddy doesn’t answer immediately because they both already know.
If he angles the shield to catch the dragonfire and spear it toward Nyrielle, he’ll have to expose himself directly to her line of power. The shield will no longer be protecting him.
Another blast tears through the shield hard enough to split skin across both of Teddy’s hands. He clenches his jaw, but a scream detonates from his throat. Pure animal and agony.
Because suddenly all he can think about is how strange it is that after a lifetime spent surviving war, violence, and godsdamned grief, the thing that finally taught him the meaning of devotion was a sharp-tongued witch who could never truly be his.Not in this life.
But gods, he has loved her anyway. Completely. Enough to choose her future over his own survival.
The realization settles through him with astonishing calm. Not regret. Never regret… not with her.Choice.
He looks at Seren while the heavens burn around them and gives her the only truth he has left.
“I will choose you,” he promises quietly, the shield trembling violently between them, “across every plane, every lifetime, every version of this world.”
Seren shakes her head, as if the clarity of what he’s doing—what he’s choosing—settles in her chest.
He’s choosingher. Over it all. Over survival. Over the impossible, aching hunger to stay.
Because gods, Teddy suddenly understands with brutal clarity that hedoeswant to stay. He wants another summer of her sharp mouth and impossible heart. Another night listening to her laugh at things she pretends are not funny. Another godsdamned night bringing her pleasure. Another fucking lifetime standing beside her while the world remakes itself around them.
Because that vow he made to Tali saved him from getting lost in his failures, but it buried him, too. It kept him trapped in a life half-lived. A cage by his own decree. Not dying, but not living either.And gods, Seren made him want to live.
But the realms are burning.
And Seren is still standing in them.
