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Lily’s arm brushing mine in a gesture of solidarity that sent warmth through my chest. The simple contact reminded me why I was willing to risk everything—not just for the cause, but for her.

“You’re sure about this?” she asked softly.

I looked at her—truly looked at her. The smudge of dirt on her left cheek from her earlier flight through the streets. The strain in her face from worrying about people she barely knew but had chosen to protect.

She was magnificent. And she was mine, if I proved worthy of her.

“I have never been more certain of anything in my life.”

Her hand found mine, fingers intertwining with the easy intimacy that had developed between us. “Then let us bring them home,” she said simply.

The fire had burned low, casting soft shadows that danced across the cabin walls.

Garrick lay near the hearth, snoring softly with one arm positioned across his chest. Mira and Thessaly had taken positions in the surrounding trees to maintain watch over our sanctuary. Adeline had retreated to the back room hours ago, though the occasional creak of floorboards suggested sleep remained as elusive for her as it did for me.

I hadn’t even attempted to sleep.

Instead, I stood vigil by the window, watching the branches shift beneath moonlight while my mind circled endlessly through tomorrow's possibilities. The world seemed to hold its breath, suspended between hope and catastrophe.

Then the door whispered open behind me, and my entire being shifted toward her like a compass finding true north.

Lily walked out of the house into the cool night without hesitation, barefoot despite the chill biting at exposed skin. Pale light caught the delicate curve of her cheek, the vulnerable line of her throat, rendering her luminous and ethereal—a creature too beautiful, too precious for the harsh realities of the world we inhabited.

My world, I corrected silently. Because she had chosen to make it hers as well.

I grabbed my coat and followed her outside, drawn by the same invisible thread that had been pulling us together since the moment our eyes first met.

She did not acknowledge my presence immediately, instead standing at the clearing's edge with arms wrapped around herself, staring into the forest.

“What if it doesn’t work?” she finally murmured.

I stopped a pace behind her. “Then we try again.”

“And if we fail completely?”

The question hung between us like a blade suspended over our heads.

“Then we fall together.” The words came simple and certain, meant with every fiber of my soul.

She released a sound that might have been laughter in different circumstances. “You make it sound poetic.”

“Everything sounds poetic when you are the subject,” I admitted.

She turned to face me. Moonlight transformed her eyes into pools of liquid silver, deep enough to drown in, beautiful enough to make the drowning feel like salvation.

Her gaze searched mine for a long moment, as though debating whether to release the truth she carried or keep it buried a while longer. “When this is over. I don’t know what will happen. Will I be swept back to my world? Back to a life where magic doesn’t exist? Where this war never happened? Where you. . .”

Her words caught, and my heart clenched at the pain I heard there.

“Where you died a century before I was even born.”

The words struck me like physical blows. I had not allowed myself to consider this possibility—that our success might mean losing her entirely, that saving this world might cost me the only thing that had ever made me feel truly alive.

I swallowed past the sudden tightness in my throat. “And do you wish to return?”

She hesitated, and in that pause I heard all my fears confirmed.

“I did.”