I wobbled as my knees weakened, but Mani grabbed my shoulders and held me steady.
“Don’t lose your grip.” Wrinkles puckered his forehead as his brows drew together. “This is the whole reason you came here, isn’t it?”
“Is it? I came looking for answers, for better control of my visions.”
He nodded. He turned and pointed toward the murky black waters. “That’s the last step in your journey. Your answers are in that well.”
My jaw fell open, and I gaped at him, wide-eyed and unblinking. “In there?” I crinkled my nose and grimaced. “I have to go in the well?”
“Either that or turn around and go back. But you didn’t come all this way to give up, did you?”
I took his hand and squeezed it. “I could stay here with you.” It was tempting. Mighty tempting.
A dark expression fell over his face, and he recoiled. “This is no place for a living person. You have an entire life ahead of you. What would make you think I’d ever be okay with letting you give that up?”
“It hurts. Living without you is the worst pain I’ve ever known.”
His eyes flashed. “Pain exists to remind you you’re alive and have a soul. You’ve come all this way because you’re fighting for something, not because you’re looking for an excuse to give up.”
I shoved him, but he held his place and braced himself as if I might attack again, a smart move because I wanted to hit him and kick him and scratch him, inflict some of the pain his death had brought on me. So he would understand, so he would know what it was like for me. Instead, I sank to the floor, hugged my knees, and stared into the well’s murky waters.
“I didn’t stop to think.” He lowered to a crouch beside me. Dark hair fell over his forehead, nearly covering his eyes. I reached out, brushed it back, and savored the feel of those silky strands beneath my fingertips. How many times had I touched him like that and taken it for granted? “The messenger said to come and get you. I never stopped to think what it would be like for you.”
“What about what it’s like for you? You’d let go of me so easily?”
Thin lines formed around Mani’s eyes and mouth as he frowned. “Easy? It wouldn’t be easy, Solina. I could cut my heart out, and it would hurt less. But this place...” He glanced up at the dark ceiling. “It’s like anesthesia. It numbs and dulls and makes you kind of stupid, if you don’t watch it. It’s deadening. And you are alive, and vivid, and bright, and why the hell do you think I’d want you in this place that would take all that away?”
“Isn’t having a dull me better than having none of me?” I asked, trying for a joke. It fell flat, and he didn’t smile. “How do I walk away from you? Losing you before... I didn’t let you go—you were taken from me. But now you’re asking me to just give you up. This time it will be my choice. My fault.”
“This isn’t real for you. You can’t stay in a dream.”
I rose to my knees and scootched closer to him. He let me take his hand and hold it against my chest, over my heart. “I’ve done something like this before. I’m not dreaming.”
His eyebrow arched. “You’ve done this before?”
“Not this exactly. But I have separated myself and visited another realm.”
He sat back and blinked. “What other realm?”
“Asgard. I’ve been there. I’ve seen the city.”
“Asgard?” The corner of his mouth twitched. “Huh. I guess if this place exists, then why not that one? What was it like?”
“A burnt-out wreck, mostly. Parts of it are growing back though.” I smiled as I thought about my orchard.
Mani gave me a curious look before he rolled to his feet, stood, and tugged me up beside him. He pulled me into another hug.
“This isn’t making it easier to leave,” I mumbled into his shoulder.
He chuckled and squeezed me once before letting go. “We’ll be together again, one day, I promise—unless you figure out how to live forever.”
I kicked a loose stone in the floor. It plopped into the well, and ripples spread across the glassy surface. I shook my head. “I don’t know if I want immortality. I want...” After recovering from the shock of reuniting with Mani, I had to admit staying here meant surrendering. It meant abandoning everyone and everything I had fought wolves and manipulative gods to keep. Nothing I had done before would matter—the sacrifices I had made as well as those made by others on my behalf. It meant deserting Skyla, and Thorin, and my parents, and a lifetime of possibilities. It meant letting Helen get away with murder. “I want a life. One time around is enough, but I want it. The whole thing, beginning to end.”
Mani smiled. “Your eyes are burning the way they do when you’re fired up about something. I didn’t believe my sister was a quitter. Good to know I was right.”
I studied the well’s black waters, ominous and foreboding, and I shivered. “You’re sure I’ve got to go in there?”
“Yup.”
“Then what?”
He shrugged. “I dunno. I’m not the one with the freaky premonitions.”
I swatted his shoulder. “It’s not freaky.”
He blinked at me and twisted his lips into a wry grin.
“Yeah, okay.” I bobbed my head. “It’s a little freaky.” When I stepped closer and toed the water, it coated my foot in oily, wet warmth. “You’ll be all right here?”
I kept my gaze fastened on the well. If Mani’s eyes gave anything away—sadness, pain, regret—I might have stayed and said to hell with everything else.
“I’ll be all right,” he said. “This place is comfort and warmth. It’s easy.”
“What about happiness?”
“It has its moments. Maybe there’s no great joy, but there’s no pain or sadness either. When they call it ‘eternal rest,’ they aren’t kidding.”
I stepped forward, drifting further into the well. The water rose to my knees. “You’re the most nonrestful person I’ve ever known.” In fact, my family had regularly joked that Mani was short for “manic.” “You’re okay with being suspended in eternal rest?”
