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I glanced at the screen and sighed. Edith.

“Hey,” I said. “I was literally just about to⁠—”

“Don’t care,” Edith said cheerfully. “Because I am sitting at my desk looking at engagement numbers that would make lesser editors weep, and I need you to tell me you’re alive.”

“I’m alive,” I said. “Barely caffeinated, but alive.”

She laughed. “Good. I need teaser boards. Two, maybe three. We’re ramping things up and people are rabid.”

“I’ll send some,” I promised. “By tonight.”

“Perfect.” She launched into marketing plans—rollouts, social engagement, targeted ads, a potential interview spot. I made approving noises and scribbled notes in the margin of the blank board, my pencil itching to draw something that wasn’t rubble.

Then she asked the question I’d been dreading.

“So,” Edith said casually. “How’s the ending coming?”

My hand stilled.

“We’re… getting there,” I lied.

There was a pause. Not suspicious. Not accusatory. Just Edith doing mental math.

“You know we’re on a clock, right?” she said gently. “Those six weeks include printing, review, shipping. We don’t have the luxury of mystery forever.”

“I know.”

“Please tell me it’s a happy ending.”

“Edith…”

“Seriously, kid. Nobody deserves a happy ending more than Kael and Seris. Nobody. Please give this poor menopausal woman a break and tell me they have wild monkey sex, then tender sex, then more monkey sex and walk into a beautiful future together.”

I closed my eyes and bent back my head, then opened them up to stare at the ceiling.

“I’m not going to tell you. It’s a surprise. Think of it like a Christmas gift—you’re just going to have to wait like everyone else.”

You’re going to have to wait just like me.

She cackled. “Oh, I like that,” she said. “We’ll sell the hell out of that.”

We hung up, and the silence rushed back in.

I reached for the stack of Bristol boards beside me and pulled out the last finished pages—Kael and Seris tangled together beneath the sorceress’s shroud, not angry, not gentle, just…human. Unresolved.

I stared at them.

“This is ridiculous,” I told the empty room. “I can’t finish your story if I won’t face my own.”

I should talk to Zarek.

The thought landed and sat there, like a skunk at a picnic.

I immediately talked myself out of it.

Not today. Maybe in a couple of days. Let him come to you.

The phone rang again. It was Trenda.