“No,” Tyler and I say together, my voice echoing in his.
“It’s all right,” the man says, and he’s so comforting, so sure, as the vines coil around his shoulders and across his chest like a pet snake. “There’s no need to be afraid.”
“This isn’t right,” we protest.
He tilts a smile at us and spreads his arms to encompass the jungle. “This is where you should be. Together, loved, with us. We know it’s frightening to make the leap. But sometimes, you must have faith.”
I stumble back, and crash not into the tree trunk that should be behind me, but into the yielding body of a human.
I whirl about, and there stands Cat, gazing at me with her perfectly blue eyes, just as she did when I held her, trying desperately to save her from her descent into the Ra’haam.
And I’m me, but I’m Scarlett, and Cat’s mind is as beautiful as it was then, whirling eddies of reds and golds that remind me of her love of flight. And I feel the depth of the love between these two women, the power of their friendship, of their sisterhood, and Cat raises her hand to reach for us.
“We love you,” she says, and I turn, stumbling away, scratches stinging with sweat as I push my way through the silent branches, the only sounds the crunch of the dead leaves underfoot, my harsh, panting breath.
Instinct is driving me now, and I can no longer see the Neridaa, the frozen ships, my parents’ kitchen. I’m holding the rainbow threads in my fist to keep them safe, and I’m pushing blindly in the direction I know I have to go.
Deeper.
Deeper.
I have to go deeper.
I push past branches, leaves swatting at me and tree trunks crowding in. I’m moving faster, frantic, and my foot catches on a log and I sprawl into a clearing, smacking to the ground with a gasp.
And when I lift my head, there he is, waiting for me.
Not Princeps, not one of them.
Just my dad, with his round cheeks and his kind eyes, holding the book of folktales we read together when I was small, that we read together in the Echo when the Eshvaren told me to bid farewell to him forever.
I lie there in the leaf litter and dirt, and I whisper the same words now that I did then, every part of me aching to run into his arms, to let him wrap me up, to feel that comfort I thought was gone forever one last time.
“I love you, Daddy.”
And he answers in almost the same way.
“We love you too, Jie-Lin. Always.”
We.
Not I.
I shake my head, my throat closing, grief pushing up like a fist. “This isn’t you,” I whisper.
“But it is,” he says softly, still smiling. “Come, let’s read a story. We can be together. We love you so, so much, my darling girl.”
I would do anything for one more day with him. For one more day with my mom, with Callie. For a chance to say the things I said to them in the Echo. For a chance to say goodbye for real.
And I want to tell myself this isn’t that.
But the deeper I go, the more I’m beginning to see.
This isn’t him.
But also … it is.
It was Cat’s love for Tyler that drove her to defend him. It’s my father’s love for me that drives the Ra’haam to try and connect with me, rather than to kill.
“I love you,” I say. “That’s what I came to tell you.”
But telling him here, now, like this—it isn’t enough.
I have to go deeper.
I have to go past the point of no return.
I have to do the thing I’ve dreaded, I see that now.
To fall in love is to surrender.
And I’m so afraid to lose myself, my hands shaking as I fumble with the rainbow strings at my wrist. They’re my path back home, my trail of breadcrumbs, my connection to everything.
Love shouldn’t ask you to give up everything else; that’s not how love works. But this is how the Ra’haam loves, and if I’m to fall deeply enough into it that I can show it a different way, a different kind of love …
One by one I untie them, tears streaming down my cheeks, and I’m laughing and crying as I release my anchors, but I know this is right, and it will be okay, it will be okay, it will be okay.
And the last string, Kal’s violet rimmed with gold, slithers away.
And I am free.
And it’s intoxicating.
I become a part of the Ra’haam, every part of my mind merging with it, spreading out with the glorious sensation of being loved and held and known, parts of me alive that I never imagined.
I live a thousand lives, a million lives, and I share mine, and we commune in glorious union.