Chapter 1689.X

Stella lay apart, not out of distance, but as though guarding the edge of the dream. She opened her eyes as Jude stood.

"You feel it too," she murmured.

He nodded. "The sky's changed."

"It's speaking." She sat up, knees drawn to her chest, breasts bare in the cool air. "I don't know the words, but I feel them in my spine."

Jude moved to her, kneeling in the moss beside her. "Alara said we were the beginning. But it feels like something's being called now. Something bigger."

Stella reached for his hand and pressed it to her chest. "Do you feel me?"

He closed his eyes. "Yes."

"And more?"

He nodded.

"That's the island inside us. We're not just dreaming it anymore. We are it."

A breeze stirred the canopy. Not cold, not sharp - but it made the moss ripple, the flowers sway. It carried a scent none of them had encountered yet. Not orchids. Not jasmine. Something new. Sweet and heady and wild.