Page 105 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
“No,” he said, louder now. “She chose this. She chose me.”
He stood.
“She called me. Like no one ever has.”
His voice cracked open, low and reverent.
“And I came. I come. I will keep coming. Because she is the only thing that matters.”
The roots around him constricted. The light dimmed further. His chest hurt from something pressing inward, something trying to collapse him back into what he had been before he earned a name.
But he had a name now.
And so did she.
He pressed his palms into the earthy walls and remembered her voice, calling his name like it meant something. Like he did. And he let himself burn.
***
Nora stumbled down a slope that hadn’t been there a moment ago. The stars changed overhead as she ran, the constellations shifting into warning signs. Her breath caught in her throat. The ground beneath her grew softer. Sticky. Red.
She was running through blood-soaked sand.
The light shifted. And suddenly, she was watching herself again.
Not a doppelgänger.
Her real self, feet planted, obsidian blade in hand, facing the Watcher alone.
“You’ll die,” the dream-Nora said.
“Probably,” she muttered.
“You’ll forget who you were.”
“I already did.”
The dream-self turned. Her mouth opened in a silent scream. And the sound that finally came wasn’t hers.
It was his.
“Asher,” Nora gasped, spinning.
The desert split behind her. Light blasted through.
She reached for it.
Asher’s fingers tore bark from the wall. His mouth opened around a snarl.
He thought of her hands. Her mouth. The way she touched him like she didn’t care what he was. The way she called him by name,hisname, that she couldn’t have known.
He remembered her pain. Her defiance. Her glow.
And in that moment, he clawed upward.
The root chamber burst into light.
They found each other again in the center of the Hollow.
