“Not commanding. Not deciding. Asking. Stay with me. Stay at Ashcombe. Stay and plague Walter with the accounts. Stay and teach Wat curses I am pretending not to hear. Stay and drink water like a woman determined to offend every brewer in England. Stay and tell me all of your future world until my head aches.”
He lifted her hand and pressed his mouth to her blood-marked knuckles.
“Stay and marry me, be my lady, the lady of Ashcombe.”
The portal brightened until it painted her hair in blue fire.
Amelia looked through the portal.
“I love my mother,” she said, and her voice shook so hard the words broke apart. “I will love her every day for the rest of my life. I’ll miss Bree. I’ll miss coffee and indoor plumbing with a passion that would scandalize Huck.”
“It would not,” Huck said, though his voice was thick. “I am difficult to scandalize.”
Hob snorted.
“But the life I built was empty,” she said. “This is the life that found me.”
The portal flared. Wind tore through the solar, whipping her hair free of its braid. Red curls spun around her like flame.
Amelia turned toward the sword. Thomas felt the movement before he saw it, the pull of that bright future world.
“It needs an answer,” she said.
The sapphire blazed. She reached down. Before Thomas could stop her, both hands closed around the hilt, her bloodied knuckle brushing the stone. “I love you, Thomas.”
Blue fire rushed up her arms.
Hob crossed himself again. “Saints.”
Huck’s prayer rose, deep and fierce.
Thomas lunged and caught Amelia from behind, wrapping one arm around her waist and covering her hand with his where it gripped the sword.
“If it takes you,” he growled into her hair, “it takes me too.”
“No,” she gasped.
“Aye.”
“You can’t come with me.”
“Then it had best leave us both where we are.”
The sapphire burned white. For one searing instant, the solar was both ruin and keep, past and future, roofless and whole. Thomas saw Amelia’s mother reach toward nothing. Saw Bree crumple against her husband.
He saw the old sword and the new, one blade across centuries, one love folded through time like a letter sealed in blue fire.
Amelia took a deep breath and lifted her face.
“I choose,” she said, though Thomas did not know whether the sword, the storm, or God himself heard her.
“I choose Ashcombe. I choose this life.”
She turned her head enough to look at him, blue light blazing over her wet lashes, her trembling mouth, the stubborn little lift of her chin that had ruined him from nearly the first day.
“I choose you, Thomas. I love you with all my heart and soul.”
The light struck. The world vanished. Then the portal closed. Silence slammed down and the sword went dark.