When I'd awoken from Ashton's last memory, I couldn't bring myself to look at Elias.

"I had to break them apart." The begging sound to his voice only irked me. "If I didn't, chaos was going to ensue. The guild was never going to let anyone get close to Ashton, especially not someone who suspected them. We're lucky that Jax never told Ash any of it because otherwise it might have cost her her life."

"I'm sure he knew that," I said.

"He did. But if they kept going, if they were truly together, then he would have told her. That would have been a decent way for her to find out. The problem is that Jax and Ash were not in a position to do anything. And I'm sorry, but patience is not a strong point for either one of you. I think that you might be ready to become a little more patient because of your experiences. She hasn't had those. She hasn't had to be in charge of taking care of the valley. I needed time to prepare for this war."

I wouldn't deny that Piercey always had been the patient, calculating one, and that he often helped to slow me down so I didn't make a mistake. Ashton and Elias had a strain on their relationship. They weren't in a good position to fight. I didn't like Elias holding the truth back from her and thought that if he had just given her the chance to overcome the challenge, then she would have, but I understood why he worried that it would have destroyed her.

My valley and the valley in the Elias's world both lacked unity, and for completely different reasons. Seeing it through Ashton's eyes, it was so clear to me that if the guilds could actually come together under the leadership of the kingdom, they could make life here so much better for their people. What did that mean for my world?

How could my valley find unity?

The question haunted me when I woke from traveling. The fallout of Ashton and Jaxon being forced apart stoked my own pain, leaving my insides felt cold and my body stiff. Elias watched me, but I had nothing to say to him.

Ashton had never wanted to turn on Jaxon. There just had been no good choice other than to turn her back on him and vow to kill him if they crossed paths again. Elias had made sure that not only could they never have a future together but that they couldn't even have the comfort pining for one another from afar. They had to hate each other and I wasn't sure I could forgive him for that. Just like Ashton couldn't.

"You saw." Tears coated his eyes.

"I saw. You've left her alone," I said. "You took everything from her and then you shut her out from your life too. No one knows better than I do how much she's lost."

"You have to understand. I knew that they'd kill Jaxon just like they killed my parents and that they might just kill Ash too. He's way too dangerous to let near our guild, especially with his ideas of revolution. Add on the fact that he told me his guild didn't kill my parents."

"So you broke them apart to keep them safe. To keep Jax away from the guild. They couldn't let someone who knew the truth be close to Ashton when her support is so important."

"Yes and even beyond that it was too dangerous."

Looking at Elias now, I couldn't believe that Ashton didn't see through him or Lote and realize that Jaxon never made any assassination plot. I didn't believe that for a second. However, I also realized that Ashton couldn't see Elias the way I did, because I knew his counterpart so far, and I saw how far he had fallen from who he should have been. She'd been devastated, humiliated, and confused. She'd thought she could trust these two men who meant so much to her.

On the other hand, I knew Elias's lies too well. While I realized that I had the benefit of knowledge she lacked, I couldn't help but feel disappointed in her for not trusting Jax more and for letting him get away.

"You should never have intervened like you did." I didn't spare him from my judgment when Ashton had never held him accountable. "Facing impossible challenges is what helps me to become more than I know myself to be capable of. Ash's love for Jax would have changed your valley. She would have united the guilds."

"It's not as simple as killing someone like in your world. This is a dangerous place."

"If I have to hear one more of your rationalizations, I'll lose my mind. I'm not going to impersonate Ashton and try to get Jaxon to work with you."

Elias's eyes widened. "Do you want to protect your world from my people? Do you want to help my people have freedom like yours do from the Prophet?"

"I could never do that to Nash." It didn't matter that Jaxon wasn't Nash because he also was. Yes, we lived in different worlds and that created differences in us. The same soul that had been uploaded to my world had been uploaded to this one. It would be a betrayal of my Nash to fool any version of him.

"We have to do something. We need him."

"You know who you need? You need Ashton. "

"Well, Ashton refuses to help me."

That wasn't true. I needed no evidence, no time to think even. Experiencing all that I had, I knew with certainty that Ashton would never refuse to help Elias. As devoted as she was to her people, she was just as devoted to this one single person. Something else had happened. Something more. Piercey had connected with Elias and hadn't found anything strange, and yet, I could sense that none of us had the full story.

Either Piercey hadn't known enough about Ashton to realize the detail was important or Elias had lied when he said it was hard to hold back when connecting. Shouldn't he have been more panicked about Lote threatening to force connection onto him?

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A cold chill swept over me.

Elias had been deceiving me this entire time, hadn't he?

"There's something you don't know," I said.

He straightened. "What?"

"Ashton saw Jax again."

Elias leaned forward, jaw dropping. "Are you serious?"

"Yes. She knew she would have to see him one more time, so she asked him to meet with her. I need to travel one more time to see what happened. It could be important."

Would Elias see through my lies?

No. He was too excited about this new development. Quickly, he pulled a pillow behind me, eager for me to travel.

I had to find my way to a moment in which Ashton sought the truth and was denied it. I knew how Elias acted when he wanted to withhold information. If I just focused on that, maybe I could land in the right time.

#

I had always spent the anniversary of the death of Elias's parents with him, but for the first time, he hadn't invited me to sit beside him at their gravesite to read their favorite poetry.

The day was always a hard one for him, so I didn't want to ask him about it until he had a few weeks to get through the grief he always felt this time of year. After enough time had passed, I tried to get in touch with him, but he was avoiding me.

So I had no choice except to use the key I had to his house to enter and see what the hell was happening.

"Elias," I called out, not wanting to startle him. He'd become more paranoid about security over the last few years and obsessively upgraded the equipment in his house to make sure no one could spy on him.

When he didn't respond, I walked into the bedroom of the small apartment and found him facing the window, an open book face down beside him.

"You haven't been answering," I said.

"I don't want to talk, Ashton. It has nothing to do with you. I just need time."

He kept his back to me, which was so much unlike him. I knew Elias so well that I had somehow missed this subtle transformation. I filled in his image with what I expected to see. The changes hit me all at once. His shoulders were hunched, his body lax, voice gruff and monotoned. He looked like someone had sucked his personality out of his body and left him shriveled.

Pity and empathy twinged my gut in equal measures. I didn't like seeing him like this.

"Elias, you have to tell me what's been going on with you. I noticed it back when we were fighting the coastal kingdom, but I thought you just weren't comfortable around me yet. Or that you were worried about the war. Clearly, it is much more than that."

My anger faded with each step I took closer until I placed my hand on his back. He stiffened at my touch, but didn't push me away.

"Talk to me."

"I can't."

"Elias." I sat beside him now and leaned closer, trying and failing to get him to look at me. "What happened?" On occasion, Elias could get moody, usually if his feelings were hurt, or if he couldn't solve conflict in some area of his life. Never did it come without cause and never this extreme. "Lote is concerned."

Stiffly, Elias twisted his neck, a subtle flame of anger barely warming his cold eyes. "Concerned."

I blinked, feeling on the verge of panic at his strange behavior. "You know that I'm on your side. I'm here for you. Let me help you."

A smile completely devoid of any warmth or happiness lifted his lips without showing in his eyes. "I know that you'll always choose me, Ash, whether it's what you truly want or not."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that I can see now that we were never going to work out. You saw that too. So why haven't you accepted it? I finally have. You need to also."

"Accepting that we cannot be together doesn't mean that I'm not here for you."

He took my hand gently. "I want you to live your life. I don't want to see you spend one more second weighed down by the guilt of not giving yourself to me. You never owed me that. You don't owe anyone that. I don't want you to throw away what you want for me ever again. We'll always be dear to each other, but this has to stop. You have to stop giving up pieces of yourself for me."

"I love you." The words burst from my mouth before I could appreciate the implication and I visibly winced. "You're my best friend."

Elias understood what I meant, though. Not for a second had there been any confusion or hope. That made him look even more sad to me. "You're mine too, Ash. That's why I'm telling you no. No, you don't get to take on this problem."

The anger returned now and I sat back, not sure why I wanted to yell suddenly. "That's not how friendship works. I gave you space. We should be here to help each other. Don't abandon me just because I won't be with you."

Everything stilled. My heart, my breath, the very air around us. After a few seconds, Elias looked down.

"I didn't mean to make you feel that way. I promise that's not what I'm doing."

"So what are you doing? Ruining your standing in the Guild? We worked so hard to get to where we are. You had the favor of all of our leaders. You were the darling, Elias. They loved you and trusted you."

A bitter laugh wrenched from his lips and he jerked away from me back toward the window, hiding whatever it was he didn't want me to see. "Go, Ash. This is my fight. Not yours. Not anyone else's. Sometimes, people need to do things alone. It doesn't mean that we aren't there for each other. We just cannot live as the same person, sucking the life from each other."

"I suck the life from you?"

"That's not what I meant."

"You know what, Elias. You can say this has nothing to do with me, but you're wrong. They see us as a package. No matter how far you try to push me away, they expect me to figure you out and get you on board. Shutting me out doesn't do you any favors and it certainly does me no favors."

I thought he would respond. I waited, hoping that what I had said would break through the steel he'd erected between us. Elias didn't, though. He stared in silence. And I had nothing left I could say.

Instead of fighting a battle with a man who refused to engage, I pushed myself off the bed and swiftly left the room.

How was it that we could overcome ending the life we'd led together and move past what he did to me by sending Lote to find me, only for this to push us apart? I had worked so hard to be the person he needed me to be. He'd said he didn't want me to do that. But did that mean he had to cut me off completely?

Something had happened and I had to find out what. It had made him angry with the guild and bitter with the leaders. He obviously felt like they never actually cared about him. So what could have happened for him to feel this way?

For months after that, I tried watching Elias to find any clues about what happened. I didn't want to ask around and put the spotlight on him, but I did all I could to investigate the situation without raising alarm about his strange behavior. Time passed and Elias began to act more like his old self, though he was still distant. I wasn't the only one who had noticed and it was worsening his relationship with the guild.

I hadn't managed to figure out anything at all and almost gave up on the endeavor altogether, until one day I noticed that Elias hadn't come home in days. I'd left his favorite snack at his apartment and found that it hadn't been touched since, something he'd never do, no matter how awful he might have been feeling.

Panicking wouldn't help me to find him and since he'd not been on the best terms with Lote, I didn't want to recruit anyone to help me search. First, I searched the cabin in the woods that only we knew about, hoping to find him hiding out there. But it looked like it had been empty for weeks. Fortunately, at some point while I searched the city for him, he came home safely.

I never figured out what he was hiding and he refused to tell me.