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.
And as I dissolve into them, I light that spark I knew I must—but I don’t set the Ra’haam on fire with grief and rage and anger.
I don’t burn it from the inside out.
Because now I know, this is the way. Not the way of the Eshvaren—every last one of them spent themselves in battle, and just one fragment of the Ra’haam survived, and so the battle began again.
This time, something has to be different.
And that something will be me.
So instead, I willingly spread my wings and become utterly a part of the Ra’haam, and I feel the million connections light up around me as I join with it, and I know it and it knows me, and we know ourselves, and I travel through it at the speed of light, and
we fall
deeper
deeper
deeper
in
love.
My love spreads like wildfire, and I share the story of Aurora Jie-Lin O’Malley, who boarded a ship to a new world and woke up two centuries later.
And I becomes we, and we tell ourself my stories as I sink further in.
We tell ourself the story of Tyler Jericho Jones, son of a warrior and a Waywalker, who found us sleeping in the stars.
Saedii Gilwraeth, daughter of a warrior and a Waywalker herself, who learned a new way to see the world.
Finian de Karran de Seel, who was told by the world that he was not enough, and showed the world he was everything.
Scarlett Isobel Jones, who had a heart so large it could beat for her friends when theirs threatened to fail.
Kaliis Idraban Gilwraeth, who bore up under fists and taunts, who swore to serve even those who would never love him back, because it was right.
Zila Madran, who made a new life and brought us this one, her love paving the way for ours.
Catherine “Zero” Brannock, who is a part of us, who never flinched, never stopped fighting, or loving.
Caersan, Archon of the Unbroken, Slayer of Stars, who was unforgivable, and yet who loved.
We tell ourself all our stories, large and small, light and dark, and together we see every color of our rainbow. And there is one tiny part of us that is still me, not we, and I keep it alive just a few moments longer so I can speak.
It’s not about the sum of the rainbow’s parts, I tell them, though it’s beautiful together. It’s about every shade within it, each of them beautiful on their own. These stories are about the way each of these people lived and loved, sometimes wisely and well, sometimes foolishly, sometimes in dark and terrible ways. But each of their journeys was their own.
Love should never ask you to give up the things that make you different. The truths that can only be told about you, and nobody else.
And just as the last parts of me dissolve into the Ra’haam, as my memory of I fades out, giving way to a beautiful, irresistible we, it begins… .
My love spreads through us like joyous wildfire, and I watch as
one
by
one
the stories of the Ra’haam awaken, blinking into existence like coals in a fire that seemed to have died.
Like a galaxy full of stars, coming alive one by one.
The Ra’haam—or rather, each and every part of it—is remembering what it’s like to be they, not it.
What it’s like to be I, not we.
And in this moment, it remembers love cannot be demanded, or taken.