Page 135 of The Threads Between

Her lips moved. No sound came out, but the words reached me anyway. Faint. So faint.

I love you. I'm sorry. I love you.

She closed her eyes. And began to slip away.

No.

The word blazed through me. A command. A refusal. An absolute rejection of the future that was trying to unfold.

I was a Threadbreaker. I could sever any connection. My power had always been described as destruction, but Lily had taught me different. Cutting was not always destruction. Sometimes it was release. Sometimes it was freedom.

Sometimes it was salvation.

I looked at Lily, at the gold light consuming her, at the threads she was holding, at the impossible weight of a thousand souls dragging her down into the void. I couldn't cut those connections. If I severed the threads she was gathering, they would scatter back into the darkness. Her sacrifice would be for nothing.

But there was another thread I could cut.

Hers.

Not from the Weave entirely. I would never do that, could never do that. But from this moment. This place. This point in time where the burning was happening.

I could cut her loose from now. Push her forward. Let the threads she was holding complete their journey without her, let them find their way home while she found hers somewhere else. Somewhen else.

It was impossible. It was insane. I had never done anything like it, had never even imagined anything like it.

But I was unprecedented. We were unprecedented. And I would not let her die.

I reached for her thread.

It was beautiful. Even now, even burning, it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Gold and crimson and a blue that matched her eyes, all woven together in patterns I didn't have words for. The thread of a woman who had crossed time itself to find me. The thread of the only person who had ever made me feel whole.

I found the place where her thread connected to this moment. Where now held her anchored to the burning, to the sacrifice, to the death that was trying to claim her.

And I prepared to cut.

“August.” Garrick's voice was rough and afraid. “What are you doing?”

“Saving her.”

“How?”

“I'm going to cut her free of this moment. Send her somewhere the burning can't follow.”

“To where?”

“I don't know.” My voice cracked. “As long as she lives.”

Garrick's face went pale. “You'll lose her.”

“I'm already losing her.”

“And you?”

I didn't answer. There was no answer to give. I would live without her. I would wake every morning to her absence. I would carry this loss until my last breath. I would become the hollow shell of a man who had held everything he loved and then cut it loose.

But she would live.

That was the only thing that mattered.