It wanted out.

“Nothing. You can do nothing, Audric. There is no relief for me, and I think you know that.” And then she risked gathering his hands in hers, because she could not live another second without telling him what must be done. She kissed his wrists, breathed out slowly against his knuckles. “I have to leave, my darling. I cannot stay here.”

He laughed a little, his brow furrowing, as if she’d told a bizarre joke. “What do you mean, leave? To go where?”

She closed her eyes. “You’re not stupid. Please don’t pretend to be. Every word I speak costs me. I have to leave. I cannot…”

She paused, swallowing hard, as if trying not to be sick. But it wasn’t sickness ripping through her. It was hunger, it was need, it was every unseen scar etched into her bones raising its voice in anguish, it was the little golden threads in her blood winding up like coils, ready to snap.

I rise

The empirium’s voice, wordless and strange, was gentle. There was no kindness there, no regret, but there was something like acknowledgment. This would be difficult, it seemed to tell her. And yet that was no reason to spare her.

we rise

“I know,” she whispered, her voice ragged. “Give me a little more time. I need just a little more.”

“What is it saying?” Audric took her face in his hands, his eyes bright. “Tell me. Let me speak to it.”

“It hears everything you say, Audric, and it doesn’t care. It’s not a person or a being. It is everything that lives. It’s you, and me, and all of us.”

“I’ll make it care.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’ll give it anything. I’ll give it myself. Anything.” His voice wrapped tight around stifled tears. “There has to be something. An exchange to be made.”

Rielle touched his cheek. “Listen to yourself. As if the empirium is a thing that bargains. You’re not facing down an enemy, Audric. This is not a negotiation. It’s trying to help me. I’ve grown beyond this body. I’m in pain, and it’s offering relief. I have only to let go of the rope and drop.”

“Please,” he whispered over and over. Eyes closed, mouth tight against her palm. “Please, don’t, not this.”

The longer she looked at him, the less strength she had to stay solid, to sit earthbound on the bed.

“I’ve told you what the past months did to me,” she whispered, dry-eyed, and yet she could barely speak, her chest in knots. “Something has awakened in me, and I cannot put it to rest. I pushed my power beyond its limits, and now it races on, dragging me behind it. You have to let me go.”

“No, I don’t. I can’t. That’s not the only way, Rielle.”

“It is. Look at me. I don’t belong here anymore. Maybe I never did. We used to have that conversation all the time. None of this should surprise you.”

“Yes, we had that conversation, and every time, I told you that of course you belong here. This is your home, your family. I still think that, even after everything that’s happened. Your power is not all of you. It is only part.”

She smiled fondly at him. “Even if I had no power at all, you would love me just as you do now.”

“I would. I would.” He looked away, glaring fiercely at the bed. “We’ll find healers—we’ll scour the world for them. Scholars of the empirium, the finest surgeons in Mazabat.”

“Audric—”

“And the wraiths—their angelic minds are spectacular. They’ll help us engineer something to help you, something to quell the pain and calm your power—”

“Audric, look at me.”

Little shakes of his head, disbelieving. He would not accept it, and he would not look at her. He dragged a hand through his hair, made a sound like choking.

“Please don’t do this,” he said hoarsely. He pressed his forehead against hers. “Don’t leave us.”

“I can barely hold myself together,” she said, stroking his hair. “I fight it every day, this turning inside me. Someday, I will lose my grip, and then what will happen to all of you? Can’t you see the danger?” How dear it was, the soft slide of his curls through her fingers. Each caress of her fingers gilded the dark strands gold.

“You’re stronger than you know.”

“And yet, what kind of life is it to fight constantly against yourself?”

“I’ll help you,” he whispered, eyes closed tightly.

“You have helped me. You welcomed me back into your life. You defend my goodness and honor every time you enter a temple and someone shouts in your face, denouncing me. You gave me Eliana.”

“And you would leave her anyway? You would let her grow up without knowing you?”

A stab to her heart. She ripped herself away from him. “Do you think I haven’t thought of all this a hundred times over?”

He lowered his gaze, wiped his face. At last, heat rose behind her eyes. She had told herself she would not cry, but he looked so ashamed, slumped on their bed. Bare-chested, tears dropping onto his hands.

“I know you’ve thought of it,” he whispered. “I’ve watched all of this turn in your eyes. I’ve told myself it was just my imagination. Every morning, I wake thinking this will be the day you tell me what you’ve just said.”

“And every day I live is another day of pain I can hardly bear. Another day in which you and Eliana and everyone we have fought so hard to save are in danger. Look at me.”

She lifted his chin, saw the bright shine of his eyes. She pressed a hard kiss to his mouth.

“I must go,” she told him, each word a struggle. “You know this. You’ve seen me suffering.”

His face was a tapestry of despair. “I have.”

“You’ve seen the changes in me. The lights beneath my skin, how I burn hotter than fever.”

“You cry in your sleep some nights,” he said, touching her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “Some days, you’re far from me, from all of us. I wonder where you’ve gone.”

“And yet you would ask me to stay?”

Helplessly, he shook his head. “I hate myself for it.”

She heard it in his voice, the loathing and the guilt. Their bedroom, soft with morning, glinted with her tears. She kissed his beautiful hands, each rough with new scars. She wished she had been there to see Atheria carry him into the hurricane. From the shore, Sloane had told her, he had dazzled. An orb of light, racing unafraid into darkness.