Far from the capital, near to my home, there is a cliff on a mountain by the sea I used to visit every summer with my father. It is a secret place. One carved from rock by children’s hands, hidden by pines, kissed by the salty breeze. Innumerable handprints of every size cover the stone within. Some thin, others wide. And if you look closely, you can see they only ever share two sets of fingerprints. Two sets that trailed down from the mountains, through the foothills and forests and beaches to the rice fields, where a girl who only had one hand first met a boy with two.

I stare numbly out at those fields now. Slumped in the shadows of an abandoned train platform of an abandoned countryside while a storm ravages what little remains of the tracks, the gardens, the fields.

The lights of the distant capital gleam through the downpour. The fading horn of a bullet train cries out mournfully as it races toward my distant homeland. My twitching fingers ache from holding onto its roof for the scant minutes I was able to. The impact crater of my uncontrolled departure from it cools out in the fields; superheated mud still steaming and bubbling. Wild bamboo creaks and bends with derelict groans. Stone crumbles from the lip of the barren platform. Tempests whistle through the abandonment like air through shattered teeth.

Cold rain sizzles where raindrops strike my skin. My head hangs low, hidden within my hands. Hair pulsing fainter, slower, as the last of the high that was propping me up finally bleeds away to cruel reality. Thane is little better off. Unable to even stay upright, sapped of every drop of strength, he slumps with his back to a low stone signpost. I sit on the steps up to the platform.

Damp, dark hair flows around Thane in the stormwind. Exposed wounds weep dark colors through the slashes in his clothes. His hands lie dormant in his lap, rough and calloused. The last sparking pieces of his JOY litter the stone beneath my feet.

I rake a damp slough of glowing hair over one side, wiping at my nose. Freckles bitterly wrinkled as I sniffle and gag on the pain in my chest. Shaking fingers grip the stone just so I have something to hold. A spiderweb of nerve-shaped lightning burns throbs across my chest, the fibrous endings shaped like roots. Such a tiny pain compared to the dread settling over my heart.

They have Cal.

They’re going to torture her.

They’re going to do to her what Aurix almost did to me. Or worse. They’re probably doing it right now. And there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

We didn’t even have a chance together before it was stolen away.

Thane coughs out a dying sound as the storm washes over us anew. All shock as he shudders in a lengthy breath. Reminding me in the most horrible way that I am not alone in my suffering.

“When Cal told me you wanted to talk, I thought she was lying. I expected you would kill me before you’d speak to me again,” he says.

“I’ve been holding out for a reason not to,” I choke out, lost in every sense of the word.

“Then you’re only going to be disappointed, Tay.”

He says it with such dogmatic sincerity. My shoulders begin to shake with anguished laughter.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Why lie now? Of all times why lie now, Thane?”

“It’s no lie.”

I whirl on him, desperate for something to focus my anger on.

“You expect me to believe that you would betray my father, the man who loved you like a son, with a smile on your face? That you like what’ve you’ve done?” Voice tearing, I shake my head in disbelief. “No. No. Not even you believe what you’re saying.”

He doesn’t even look me in the eyes.

“And what if I don’t?” he asks. “Guilt won’t change anything. What I’ve done, there’s no undoing.”

“You think I don’t know that?” I force myself up with bitten-down cry of pain. Sneakers splashing as I stagger down towards him. “I hated you, Thane. More than anything. Because of you, I have nothing left. No friends, no family. No future. And then you took more.” I choke in a breath. “You killed Dad, and that’s not something that you can ever take back. Even if it was a mistake.”

“So why didn’t you finish it when you had the chance?”

“Because of Cal!” I cover my mouth with the back of my hand, trying with everything I have to hold back my anger. “She gave me something new to live for, and now she’s gone. All because I told her I wasn’t going to do what you did to me, not even if it’s what you deserve.”

He stares up at me. “Because it’s what your father would do?”

“Because I loved you, Thane!” Salty tears join the rain streaming down my cheeks. My mouth works in anguish. “I still do, even after you threw me away. I will until the sun goes out. And in the darkness then, I will love you even still.” I clutch at my heart. “Even if it hurts.”

Thane turns away to hide his guilt. “I did throw you away,” he whispers, eyes fixed on the garden. He sinks back down to the stone with one leg curled. “Make no mistake, I did.”

The wind slashes us with heavy curtains of downpour. I lower my head against the storm, looking down at my charred fingers. Of the left, two are broken. The rest twitch in small spasms, smeared with blood that is not my own. They fought so hard to be here. I thought I would know what to do if I made it. But now, I only have him left to ask what comes next.

“Tell me something, Thane. So I can end this.”

Our silence is torturous before he breaks it, his voice a broken reminder of all I have lost.

“Anything.”

My fingers tremble, half-curl. “Did you ever regret it?”

“Every night,” he quietly says, tears welling in his eyes. “But you can’t change the past.”

“One mistake isn’t all that you have to be,” I say. “You can always turn away. You’re as good as dead to Gami. You have nothing now, just like me.” Falling to a knee, I take Thane’s cheek in my hand, turning his head until I can look at him straight through the tears in my eyes. “Just look at me, Thane. Listen to me. Please. I can’t… I can’t get Cal back on my own. I can’t do this alone.”

My tears are mirrored in his eyes. Running down his cheeks until they cross my fingers and plummet to the stone beneath our feet.

His head dips and turns away from my hand. Saying nothing for a long, long moment.

“Why?” he finally asks. “Why go so far, after everything I’ve done to you?”

I don’t take my hand back. It hangs there before him, begging him to look at me, to take it, to do anything to show me that I’m right to listen to my heart. His eyes trace the fingertips. Wanting, yet knowing he can’t. That he is unworthy of the promise I extend.

“Because I can’t lose you too, Thane,” I whisper. “Not when I need you most.”

My hand waits.

“Let’s go again. One last time.”