Page 339

A month in this cold, brutal terrain was testing even my resolve.

“We’re not lost,” I argued. “We’re… wandering, with a purpose.”

“Poetic,” Mags panted, setting her hands on her hips and glaring at the vast expanse of seemingly endless white caps.

You will lose she who you most loved.

Ever since we’d pried our way out of Koa’s thicket, the final warning of the woods had taunted me. Because those words hadn’t come from Koa. They’d come from Yeshua. I couldn’t decide whether they were a warning not to grow more attached—to guard my heart against still more agony—or a demand to soak up every second I could.

I’d been a damn fool in Rhiannon’s spring—thinking I could touch her without wanting to claim her wholly. Thinking the need to unite in body and soul wouldn’t consume me while that prophecy warred in my head. Every longing look, every seductive rasp of Magnolia’s voice, every well-intentioned touch to steady her brought the warning back.

No.

I refused to accept it.

Somehow, some way, I’d save her. Was that the warning? A command to find a way around the one ending I couldn’t survive? I must’ve been staring, because Mags’ brows pinched with concern, and she canted her head.

I tried to smile, but the dip between her eyes said it was a failed attempt.

“I’ll take this over the desert any day,” Brody said, drawing my attention back into the moment right as a winded-looking Rika finally sidled up next to him. God bless the dauntless.

“The snakes were demonic,” Rika decided, “but I’d cuddle one right now if it meant I could stop climbing.”

The three of them stood panting as they stared across the luminous mountains of The Middle, each rocky ascent somehow sharper than the last.

“If I never again see mountains, it would be too soon,” Mags agreed.

“Well, don’t say that. You’ll miss our annual sledding trip.”

“Sledding trip?” Mags chirped.

“Yeah, beautiful. We race until we can’t feel our limbs anymore,” I said, laughter echoing from the memory. God, I missed them. All of them. I craved my people like a starving man. “Afterward, the girls pull out everything for cookies, and me, Alec, and…” Suffocating. Six months later, Ansel’s absence was still an albatross around my neck. My chest constricted, throat suddenly noose-tight.

“Ansel,” Mags finished. Goddamn, it still hurt to say his fucking name. To hear it. Ansel had my back in all things. Well. All but one. He’d thrown himself between me and jumping from Grayshell when Ally went nuclear last January—insisting we listen to her, follow the plan even when she went dark. And I hadn’t forgiven him.

Stupid.

Fucking stupid. I knew better than to cling to water under the bridge and expect not to drown.

Fighting down a swallow, I forced a smile. “And now, August. We, uh… raid the bar cart, and the assholes act like I don’t specifically stock their favorites. Like it’s a miraculous occurrence every goddamn year.” My chest ached anyway.

Would I ever stand in that cabin again? Would it survive all of this? Would we? Would Winnie grow up singing carols around the tree, and throwing her head back in laughter as her father cheated his way down the mountain? Or were those fragmented shards of our past the last pieces of normalcy we had to cling to?

“You will.”

I blinked, looking down to glassy aqua eyes as Mags stared up at me. “Yeah,” I breathed. “Someday.”

“You’ll get them back,” she said. “August will bring Ally and Blythe home. It won’t be the same, but… we’ll survive it together.”

“Together, huh?” I asked softly, lifting a hand to trace her cheekbone with the rough pad of my thumb. She nodded tightly, silver collecting in those beautiful eyes.

For a moment, she robbed the breath from my lungs simply by existing—the sincerity in her eyes, the one kernel of hope she could offer me in all this uncertainty, the soft give of her lush lip beneath my thumb.

In a dimension composed almost entirely of light, mountains so rugged their jagged teeth looked like a testament to the Creator himself, she outshone everything.

And I let myself soak her in, knowing full well I couldn’t have her—that however it had been intended, the message had been clear.

I would lose the woman I loved most.