Nyrielle’s magic detonates against the shield again, violent enough to drive Teddy to one knee. He hears her taunting laugh over the carnage like this is all a game. Blood spills from his mouth as the shield falters.
Behind him, Elyssara and Maireth still collide in a catastrophic eruption of shadow and light powerful enough to fracture the sky itself. Dragons scream overhead. Soldiers still die by the hundreds below.
The world has narrowed to heartbeats. To one choice. One impossible act of love. The only thing left that he can give Seren.
“Teddy…” Seren’s voice breaks completely now.
He lifts his gaze back to hers and sees the exact moment she understands the truth of it.
“No matter what, Seren,” he grits out.
A whimper escapes her. She sees it.
Not sacrifice.
Choice.
He is giving her the thing this life never could.
A future.
Even if he cannot exist inside it with her.
“No matter where, Teddy.”
She grips her chest like she can hold her heart together from the outside.
“Just not in this one,” she whispers, but he hears it with crystal clarity through the war that rages around them.
He smiles, wide and unrestrained. “Find me in the next one. I’m yours.”
A strangled scream tears from her throat because she hears everything he refuses to say:goodbye.
“Tell Tarrakai,” Teddy says again, more firmly this time. “Now, Seren.”
She stares at him in horror, tears streaking down her face as golden magic lashes violently around her body.
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
Another strike slams into the shield hard enough to split the stone beneath Teddy’s knees.
The Aether fails.
It will no longer hold. He has one chance.
Teddy feels Nyrielle’s magic drawing back to surge. To break through him with finality, thread by thread, like something ancient and merciless has finally decided to claw its way inside his bones.
Time is over.
And still, all he can think is how beautiful Seren looks standing in the middle of the end of the world.
“Across planes,” she whispers suddenly, voice shaking violently. “Across lifetimes. Across every godsdamned version of existence… it will always be you.”
Teddy’s breath catches. Not because the words surprise him. Because somewhere deep down, he has always known they were true.
Nyrielle moves to strike again.
