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He brushed the hair from her face. “No matter the shape, you’ve earned it. I’ve watched you. Seen your Spirit growing.” The pride in his voice was mixed with concern. “You’re still afraid you’ll hurt them with it.”

She looked away toward the motionless field where death and life were interchangeable. Auren’s face flashed in her mind unbidden—golden hair and hollow eyes that forevermore held pain. She hugged her arms around herself.

“I can’t let it happen again,” she said, voice straining to stay calm. “I can’t make the wrong choice.”

“Sometimes,” her father said softly, “not choosing to act at all is a worse choice.”

“But I don’t know what I’m doing.” She’d thought there was no sadness here, but the pressure building in her chest was close enough that she couldn’t tell the difference. “I keep trying my best and making everything worse.”

The voice came again, clearer now. More desperate.

This is how you fight…Remember. And suddenly she did.

Orzen. Heartwood. Binding Bough. His missing scar.

Silas. The kiss he’d stolen.

Spirit magic, corrupted. Torn from her grasp.

Voryx straining to break free. The seal crumbling apart.

She cried out, collapsing into her father’s arms. He held her as she shook, her mind pounding with the weight of everything returning at once. She saw it now, the choice before her, but the answer was no clearer than it had been before.

The seal was cracked, and there would be no easy way to bind Voryx once more—not unless she poured what remained of herself into the wound, as the Wardens had before her. Sacrifice herself like the prophecy said.

Binding Voryx had simply patched the problem before. Doing so now would only continue to lead Naldoreth into stagnation.

She could stop fighting it—let the seal fail completely. Do nothing and release Voryx bodily into the world. Doom them all to wanton destruction at the hands of a god too bitter to be reasoned with. It was what Silas had used her for, what the Witherborn prayed for, what Voryx wanted.

The choices were cruel. Failure waited at either end.

“There’s no right answer,” she said, swallowing hard. “Either choice I make, we fail. Someone always gets hurt.”

“You’ve never lived like there were only two options,” he said, holding her face gently in his hands. “Why start now?”

She blinked at him. “Find another way?”

She wasn’t even sure what that would look like.

Caging Voryx was wrong. Not only because she’d lose herself accomplishing it. The Cycle needed both Voryx and Elaren, rest and work, growth and decay.

He’d been paired with Elaren—bound to her through shared responsibility for the Cycle. Yet he’d been overlooked, feared for what his power did, for what they thought it meant about who he was. It was part of him, a part he couldn’t change. When he was rejected, he chose violence in response. And so had she.

She’d seen what her weaving did when guided by anger instead of care. She’d destroyed Witherborn. Sent the Fist running in fear. The terrible rightness of it had settled in her bones.

The only difference was, she’d always come back from it. She’d questioned herself and repaired what she could. She’d fought against the part that wanted to sustain life without end like she had with Auren—still felt the pain that it had caused when she made the wrong choice.

Jessa’s stories about the Breaking came back to her piece by piece. It took immense power to appear bodily, but there was another way the gods fought each other in the old war. Through vessels: mortals that welcomed Voryx and Elaren into themselves, agreed to be used by the gods.

Maybe Voryx needed the chance to be guided toward different choices. He couldn’t do that while bound. Couldn’t while raging in his full power. If Voryx’s vessel was someone willing to fight for the good of the Cycle itself…

“I think I know what I have to do.”

If she could keep him anchored, lead him back toward balance, maybe he’d choose differently this time. It didn’t feel like success—only an acceptance that something would be lost if she chose differently.

Above them, color drained from the sky like ink settling in water. Something was changing. The bubble of safety in this place was dissolving around them. The choice loomed ahead.

“Won’t be long now.” Pa kissed the top of her head. Movement shifted in the brush. The bushy tail of a squirrel darted up the trunk of a tree, then disappeared.