His chest ached. He wanted to argue, to say she was wrong, that he’d failed in every way that mattered, but the words wouldn’t come. Maybe she wasn’t wrong.

  “What if she’s already gone?” he whispered.

  “I don’t think so. I believe she’s still in there.” She glanced at Ember and Owe. “I know Vesper and I know how she feels about you. She’d fight tooth and nail to the bloody end.”

  Rafe looked up at her, his body and mind barely holding on. He wanted to believe, but hope had betrayed them so many times.

  “They’re still here,” Blair murmured. “The Echo and Threnos. They didn’t leave.”

  His head jerked up. “Where?”

  “I can feel them in the ley lines.” She lifted her free hand and Rafe saw the faint shimmer of copper tinged opalescence thread between her fingers. “Not far. Just past that collapsed tower.” She pointed northeast, where a building had folded in on itself. “You need to go to her.”

  Everything in him wanted to run, to sprint through the rubble and find Vesper right now, but his body wouldn’t cooperate. His legs barely supported his weight. Fresh blood trickled down his temple and his vision swam at the edges.

  Blair seemed to read his mind. She shifted her grip to his elbow and helped him to his feet, taking some of his weight. Her strength surprised him. She looked as battered as he felt but she held him steady.

  “I’ve got Ember and Owen,” she said. “I’ll make sure they’re safe. The other Praxis agents are nearby. You go find Vesper and bring her back.”

  “Blair.” He met her gaze, saw her grief but also the fierce resolve her knew so well, underneath it. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet.” A ghost of a smile touched her lips, there and gone in an instant. “Just go. And Rafe?” She squeezed his elbow once, hard. “Don’t give up on her. No matter what you see, no matter what she says. Vesper’s still in there. I know she is.”

  He nodded, unable to form words past the knot in his throat. Blair gave his arm one last squeeze and then released him, stepping back.

  Rafe forced himself to walk.

  Each step jarred through his ribs and sent fresh pain radiating through his chest. The ground beneath him was unstable, debris shifting with his weight and making each step uncertain. He kept his gaze fixed on where Blair had pointed and made his way around collapsed walls and piles of broken stone. Smoke drifted across his path and he coughed, eyes watering. His body wanted him to stop, to collapse right there, but he kept moving. Vesper was close and she was alive and nothing else mattered.

  The collapsed tower loomed ahead, its top three floors pancaked down onto the base. He skirted the worst of the debris, rounding a pile of rubble. Then he stopped.

  The Echo stood alone in a wide circle of scorched ground.

  She was just standing there, trembling, staring at the devastation stretching out before her. At the shattered buildings, the scorched earth, and the bodies lying motionless in the streets. The death others had caused to draw her out. The pain others had caused trying to take her power. The destruction she herself had caused. The world she had nearly ended.

  Rafe’s throat closed. He took another step forward and then another, limping across the broken ground. Every instinct screamed at him to be careful, to remember what she’d nearly done, to stay away, but he couldn’t.

  “Vesper.” The name left him before he could think better of it.

  The Echo went rigid. For a long moment she didn’t move at all. She didn’t even seem to breathe. Then her head turned slowly until she looked at him over her shoulder.

  Her eyes were still wrong. They still shone silver with the awareness of something far older and more terrible than anything human. When she met his gaze, the light shifted and he saw something raw and broken in them. Recognition flickered there, sharp and painful. Then something deeper, something that looked almost like despair.

  Her lips parted. No sound came out.

  Rafe took another step toward her. Then another. The fear that had gripped him moments ago was fading, burned away by something stronger, something that pulled him forward even though he didn’t know what he’d say when he reached her.

  He had no idea if Vesper was still in there or if the Echo had consumed her completely. It didn’t matter. He just knew he had to try.

  The Echo watched him approach, her expression fracturing further with each step he took. Her hands came up slowly, trembling, fingers spreading as though she wanted to reach for him but didn’t dare.

  Rafe closed the distance between them, ignoring the pain burning through his body, and ignoring the exhaustion threatening to drag him down. He focused on her face, on the way her eyes tracked his movement, on the shallow gasps of her breathing. On the way she looked at him with such anguish that it stole what was left of his breath.

  “Vesper,” he said again, softer this time.

  And he was no longer afraid.

  The Echo’s control wavered. Something cracked behind those silver eyes and her breath hitched. She stared at him and for just a moment, Rafe could have sworn he saw Vesper looking back. Not the ancient being who had destroyed worlds, not the raw power that had nearly torn reality apart, but the woman he loved. The woman who was still fighting.

  Then her knees buckled and she collapsed forward.

  Rafe lunged to catch her, his arms closing around her as she fell. The impact drove him back a step and fresh agony blazed through his ribs, but he held on. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, one hand coming up to cradle the back of her head. She was shaking violently, her whole body trembling against his. Her fingers clutched at his shirt, desperate and clinging.

  “I’ve got you,” he whispered into her hair. “I’ve got you.”

  The Echo made a sound that might have been a sob or might have been something else entirely…something without a name in any human language. Her grip on him tightened and Rafe held her through it, his cheek pressed against the top of her head, his eyes burning.

  He had found her. Whatever came next, whatever he had to face, he had found her.

  And he wasn’t letting go.

  Chapter 30

  Threnody felt Rafe’s arms around her, solid, warm, and impossibly fragile. The human held her as though she might shatter, as though his grip alone could keep her tethered to this world. His heart beat against her chest, rapid and uneven. Blood soaked through his shirt from wounds she could sense but barely comprehend. He was dying and he held her anyway.

  She should push him away. She could kill him without meaning to. One pulse of power, one moment of lost control, and he would be gone.

  But she couldn’t move.

  “It’s alright.” His voice was rough, barely more than a whisper. “I’ve got you.”

  Threnody’s hands clutched at his shirt, fingers digging into the fabric. She couldn’t make herself let go. The trembling that ran through her body wouldn’t stop and she hated that she could feel at all.

  The physical world pressed in on her from all sides. The scorched ground beneath her feet, sharp with broken stone. The wind cutting across her exposed skin. The weight of gravity pulling at her limbs.

  “I know you’re frightened,” he said. “I know you don’t know what to do. But you don’t have to do anything right now. Just breathe.”

  She was breathing. Short gasps that hurt her chest and made her throat burn. When had breathing become difficult? She’d gone millennia without needing air and now her lungs demanded it, and punished her when she forgot.

  Rafe’s hand moved to the back of her head, his fingers threading through her hair. His touch was gentle, and something about it made her chest constrict further. No one had touched her with gentleness in so long. Threnos had tried, but she’d been too far gone by then to feel anything.

  “Do you remember when we first met?” His voice was so quiet she almost couldn’t hear it over the wind. “In the Fold. You were terrified and I dragged you through those shifting streets whilst those Fold Hunters chased us. You didn’t know me, and had no reason to trust some random stranger in an even stranger world, but you followed anyway.”

  Threnody’s breath hitched. She remembered. It wasn’t her memory, but Vesper’s. The terror, the confusion, the desperate need to survive even when everything was falling apart around her. Vesper had been so fragile then, so new to magic, and yet she’d run alongside this man she’d just met because there was no other choice.

  “The grimoire.” He continued speaking, his voice steady despite the pain she could feel radiating from his broken body. “When it first revealed itself to you in the library. You could have run from it, could have pretended you’d never seen it, but you didn’t. You took it even though you had no idea what was happening.”

  Another memory surfaced. Vesper’s hands shaking as she’d opened the blue book, the markings appearing on her skin, the vision of Selene working elemental magic. Threnody felt the fear that had gripped her, the certainty that her life would never be the same, and yet she’d kept the grimoire. She’d sought out help. She’d chosen to step into this world instead of turning away.

  “Then the trials at Thornhallow,” he said, and there was something in his voice now, a note of pride mixed with old fear. “You walked into that labyrinth knowing it might kill you. You crafted those artefacts even though it might’ve revealed the truth about your magic. You stood your ground and fought the shadow mages who’d infiltrated Thornhallow. You became a warrior that day.”

  The memories came faster now. Vesper navigating the maze of her own past, sorting truth from fiction. Vesper at the forge, pouring her magic into metal despite the risk. Vesper standing in the trial chamber as reality tore open and mages poured through, watching as Rafe threw himself between her and death.

  “Selene’s archive.” His grip on her tightened slightly. “All those nights you spent decoding the grimoire, trying to understand what you were becoming. You never gave up even when it terrified you.”

  Threnody felt the phantom ache of those long nights. Vesper hunched over the desk in that hidden basement, her mind spinning with symbols and meanings, surrounded by Selene’s research. The desperate determination to understand the magic growing inside her, to find answers in the books her friend had left behind.

  “The garden in Greenwich.” Rafe’s voice dropped even quieter. “You walked right up to those spirits and spoke to them without fear. You claimed that thorn even though it burned your hand. You were magnificent.”

  That memory carried warmth. Vesper reaching for the magical thorn, feeling its power respond to hers, the spirits retreating because they recognised what she was. The first real proof that she belonged in this world, that her magic was more than just destruction waiting to happen. They recognised her because she bore a grain of Threnody’s own soul, the soul that had created the ley lines which their magic depended on.

  “The Original Source beneath Nightreach.” He paused, seeming to gather himself. “When those water spirits pulled you under, I thought I’d lost you, but you found your way back. You always found your way back.”

  The terror of that moment hit Threnody with unexpected force. Not her terror, but his. Rafe standing at the edge of the well, helpless, watching Vesper disappear into darkness. The certainty that she was gone, that he’d failed to protect her. And then the relief when she’d emerged, soaked and shaking but alive.

  “Saint Aldwin’s.” The words came out strained. “You performed that ritual even though you knew what it might cost. You faced down Cassandra and killed her to protect us. You were so strong, Vesper. So much stronger than you ever believed.”

  Vesper’s guilt tangled with Threnody’s grief. The moment when shadow magic had poured through her, when she’d struck down another living being and watched her turn to ash. The horror of what she’d done, and the fear of what she was becoming.

  “The Fold,” he whispered. “Fighting D’Arco at the seventh convergence point. You destroyed something ancient and powerful because it was the right thing to do, even though it meant you might die.”

  That memory was the brightest. Vesper channelling pure Resonant magic, feeling power fracture under her will, watching D’Arco’s stolen abilities crumble. The certainty that this was necessary, that some things were worth sacrificing everything for. That love and friendship and the chance for others to live mattered more than her own survival.

  And beneath it, Threnody felt something else. A flicker of recognition, of understanding. Vesper had shattered her soul to save others. She had made the choice to break apart something whole and ancient because keeping it intact would have meant more suffering. The parallel struck too close. Both of them had chosen destruction over allowing corruption to spread.

  Rafe pulled back slightly, just enough to meet her gaze. His eyes were red and swollen, tears tracking through the blood and dirt on his face. He looked at her as though she was the only thing in the world that mattered and it burned worse than any wound she’d ever endured.

  “I don’t care if you’re a god now.” His voice broke on the last word. “You’re still Vesper.”

  “No.” The word tore from her throat, harsh and wrong. “I’m not.”

  He went very still against her but he didn’t let go.

  Threnody forced herself to speak, to make him understand. “I am Threnody. I am the Echo. The woman you knew is⁠—”

  “Still there.” His hand came up to cup her face, thumb brushing away the wetness on her cheek. When had she started crying? “She’s still there. I can see her.”

  “You’re wrong.” But even as she said it, she felt a stirring deep inside. Vesper, pushing against the walls of their shared consciousness. Fighting to reach him.

  Rafe.

  Vesper’s voice echoed through Threnody’s mind, desperate and full of longing. The human soul surged upward with a strength that shouldn’t have been possible, clawing her way toward the surface. Toward him.

  Threnody tried to push her back down but Vesper wouldn’t go. She kept reaching, kept fighting, and the love that poured from her was so intense it made Threnody’s vision blur.

  “Is she gone?” Rafe’s voice cracked. Fresh tears spilled down his face and he made no attempt to wipe them away. “The woman I love. Is she gone?”

  I’m here. I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.

  Vesper’s words rang through Threnody’s skull, each repetition more frantic than the last. The soul pressed against Threnody’s control and she let her rise…and Vesper saw him.

  The love that flooded through their shared consciousness was overwhelming. Threnody had destroyed worlds. She had torn apart reality and unmade beings who had stood since the dawn of creation. She had endured millennia of isolation and grief and the slow erosion of everything she’d once been.

  But this feeling, this raw, terrible, and beautiful thing that bound these two souls together, was stronger than anything she had ever known.

  He held her gaze, his eyes searching hers for something she didn’t know how to give him. His hands trembled where they touched her but he didn’t pull away. He stayed, broken and bleeding and dying, because he loved Vesper more than he feared what Threnody might do to him.

  She finally understood what she’d truly destroyed.

  This was what she had lost. This was what she had obliterated when she destroyed her people. Not just lives or civilisations or the future her people might have had. This. The way two souls could find each other across impossible odds and choose to hold on even when everything else fell apart.

  Threnos had loved her this way once, before the corruption. Before she’d become something too broken to accept love or offer it in return.

  A sob tore from Threnody’s throat. Then another. She couldn’t stop and she didn’t want to. Vesper’s grief tangled with her own until she couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. They wept together, two souls sharing one body, mourning everything they’d lost and everything they might still lose.

  Rafe pulled her close again, his arms wrapping around her as though he could hold them both. His own tears fell into her hair and his body shook with the force of his crying.

  “She’s still there,” he whispered. “You’re both still there.”

  Threnody pressed her face against his shoulder and let herself break.

  Rafe held Threnody whilst she sobbed, his own tears falling into her hair.

  Her hands clutched at his shirt with desperate strength and he could feel her trembling against him. Each sob shook her entire body. He didn’t try to stop her or soothe her with empty words. He just held on and let her grieve for everything she’d lost.

  The minutes stretched. His injured shoulder throbbed, but he didn’t care. His ribs ached with every breath and blood still trickled down his temple, but none of it mattered. Vesper was here. Threnody was here. Both of them existed in this body he held, and he would stay until his own gave out completely if that’s what it took.

  Eventually her sobs quietened. Her breathing evened out though she didn’t pull away. Rafe kept his arms around her and stared at the devastation surrounding them. The scorched circle where they stood, the rubble and ruins stretching in every direction, fires still burning blocks away. Nightreach had been torn apart and somehow they were both still alive.

  He didn’t know how long they stayed like that. Time felt strange here, stretched and compressed at once, but finally Threnody lifted her head and looked at him.

  Her eyes were still silver, but something had changed in them. Her fury had burnt itself out, leaving behind something more fragile. She met his gaze and he saw both of them looking back at him. Ancient and young, overlapping in ways that shouldn’t have been possible.

  “I don’t know much about what you are,” Rafe murmured. “I don’t know what it’s like to exist for thousands of years or to carry the memory of all of history, but I know about choice. Of sacrifice.”