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“This is why my family protected the ritual. Leaving is never easy. There will always be a reason to stop someone from choosing it.”

Blood drops from my chin and spatters across the stone. Beneath it, the gray surface warms and darkens. A faint image emerges through the stain—the carved open circle.

Ezra stares.

The land shudders beneath us. Water lifts in the channel without spilling over its banks. The fog moves against itself, curling in opposite directions.

Theo’s old bite scar reddens against Ezra’s throat. Pain hits both men at once. Theo drops to one knee on his side of the marker. Ezra nearly folds beside me. The bond is pulling them together. The route knows we are here.

“Pepper,” Theo says. My name is raw in his mouth.

I look at him. He has blood on his knuckles and mud across his shirt. One shoulder hangs lower than the other. I can see the love in his eyes, screaming at him to cross the stone and take both of us home.

My alpha stays.

“I need you to tell me what to do,” Theo says.

The trust in that nearly breaks me.

I go back through Josephine’s instructions in my head. “No matter what happens, stay behind the marker.”

His hands close into fists against his thighs.

“Even if I fall?” I ask.

His face goes white. “Even if you fall.”

“Even if Ezra disappears?”

His purr hums low in his chest, a wounded sound that sputters even as it tries to provide comfort. “Even then.”

I turn to Ezra. He’s crying silently. Fog shows through his left hand. I place the witness stone into his right. The moment it touches him, he becomes fully solid. Hope punches through me. Then his fingers flicker around the stone.

“The route follows the old channel,” I say. “Walk until you reach the open circle. Don’t look back. Whatever you see, you keep going.”

“And you?”

“I stay at the witness point.”

“You can barely stand.”

“I can stand long enough.”

His eyes drop to my ankle. “No.”

“Ezra.”

“No, Pepper. I’m not leaving you bleeding beside the swamp.”

The curse pulls tighter. Fog shapes itself behind Ezra. For a strange moment, I see Susannah wearing swamp lilies around her wrist. She turns toward the people calling her and the image disappears.

I take Ezra’s face between my bloody hands. “Look at me.”

He does.

“I’m scared,” I say.

His mouth trembles.