“I’m saying that losing what you thought defined you isn’t always the end. Sometimes it’s the beginning of something different.” Rebecca rose from the chair and brushed some imaginary dust from her jeans. “She’s going to need time. And she’s going to need you to be patient with her while she figures out who she is now.”
“I can do that.”
“I know you can.” Rebecca stopped at the door and looked back over her shoulder. “There’s something else you should know. The mercenaries who survived the Dragon’s emergence — Eric tracked their communications. Most of them scattered when Julian Gregory’s compound went up, but a few regrouped at a secondary location about ten miles north.”
Ben’s jaw tightened. “What are you going to do about them?”
“What I should have done from the beginning.” Her expression hardened. “I’m going to arrest them. Eric’s already compiled enough evidence to bury them — illegal weapons trafficking, assault on federal land, conspiracy to commit environmental terrorism. I’ve got contacts at the FBI field office in San Francisco who owe me favors. By this time tomorrow, those men will be in custody, and Aetheris Dynamics will be under investigation by every regulatory agency in the country.”
“And Rosenthal?”
Rebecca’s mouth twisted. “That’s a lot more complicated. She’s technically a fugitive from justice, but she also has information that could be valuable.” She paused. “I’m going to offer her a deal — full cooperation in exchange for reduced charges, again in coordination with the field office in San Francisco. It’s not exactly justice, but it’s the best option we have.”
Again, Ben found himself frowning. “Sidney’s not going to like that.”
“Sidney doesn’t have to like it. She just has to accept that sometimes the world doesn’t give us the clean endings we want.” Rebecca’s expression softened slightly as she continued. “But for what it’s worth, I think Rosenthal is done. Whatever fire was driving her, whatever obsession kept her going all these years — I saw it go out when her device failed. She’s broken, Ben. She’s not a threat anymore.”
Ben thought about the woman he’d seen stumble out of that burning SUV, clutching her failed device like a lifeline, how her face had crumpled when she realized it wasn’t going to work, how her voice had sounded small and childlike when she asked what they could possibly do.
“Maybe that’s its own kind of justice,” he said quietly.
“Maybe.” Once again, Rebecca looked as if she was about to leave, and then paused. “I’ll be downstairs if you need anything. Eric’s flying down from Oregon this afternoon — he wants to run some tests on the portal site and make sure the stabilization is holding. And the other guardians are starting to talk about heading back to their own thresholds. The crisis is over. It’s time for everyone to go home.”
She left, her footsteps quiet on the hardwood floor, and Ben turned back to Sidney.
Home. The word felt different now than it had a few months ago. Back then, home had been a rented cottage in Silver Hollow, a temporary base for his investigations into the mysterious white horse that had brought him to this town in the first place. Now home was this room, this bed, the woman sleeping beside him. Home was the old Craftsman house with its creaking stairs and temperamental windows. It was a life he’d never expected to build, with a person he’d never expected to find.
He hoped it was still home for her, too.
Afternoon light had begun to slant through the windows when Sidney finally stirred.
Ben had dozed off at some point, his head resting on his arms at the edge of the bed, his hand still loosely clasped around hers. He woke to the sensation of her fingers tightening against his, and he lifted his head to find her eyes open and watching him, oddly clear.
“Hey,” he said softly.
“Hey.” Her voice was hoarse, rough from disuse. “How long was I out?”
“About six hours. It’s almost three in the afternoon.”
She processed this information slowly, her gaze drifting to the window where the autumn sunlight painted golden rectangles on the floor. “The Dragon?”
“Gone. Back to sleep, according to your grandmother. The portal’s stable, the network’s healing, and the apocalypse has been officially postponed.” He tried to smile, but the expression felt strangely fragile on his face, as if it might crack at any moment. “You saved the world, Sidney…again.”
She didn’t respond to that comment. Instead, she lifted her free hand and looked at the scars that traced her forearm, the delicate fern-like patterns that had once glowed with phoenix fire, now dark and ordinary.
“It’s really gone,” she said, her tone quiet, almost musing. “I keep reaching for it, expecting to feel something. But there’s nothing there. Just silence.”
Ben squeezed her hand. “I know.”
“Do you?” She looked at him, and he saw the fear beneath the exhaustion, the fear of being diminished, of being less than she was. “You still have your scars. You can still feel things I can’t. The resonance, the dimensional sensitivity — all of that’s still part of you.”
He hadn’t thought about it that way. His own abilities had been a byproduct of Sidney’s — his scars responding to hers, his bioelectric field syncing with hers during moments of connection. Without her abilities to resonate with, would his own fade, too? Or would he be left with powers she no longer possessed, a constant reminder of everything she’d lost?
“I don’t know what I still have,” he admitted. “I haven’t really tested it. Everything’s been so focused on you, on making sure you were okay….”
“I’m not okay.” The words were flat, almost matter-of-fact. “I’m alive, and I’m grateful for that. But I’m not okay, Ben. I don’t know if I’m going to be okay for a while.”
He shifted onto the bed beside her and gathered her into his arms. She came willingly, her head finding its familiar place in the curve of his neck, her body fitting against his the way it always had. No glowing scars, no pulse of shared energy, just two people holding each other in the afternoon light.