Chapter 19: The Last Chain

The wind screamed through the Rift of Echoes.

Leia stood at the edge, cloak torn, hair tangled with frost. Below her stretched a bottomless chasm—curse winds howling into oblivion. A fitting grave for the thing inside her.

She looked down at her hands.

They were shaking.

Not from fear.

From certainty.

If she jumped, the curse would die with her. The bond would snap. Cassian would live.

Far behind her, bells clanged.

Boots crunched across snow.

“Leia!”

She didn’t turn.

Cassian’s voice was hoarse. “Don’t do this.”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“I always come when I shouldn’t.”

He stepped beside her, eyes bloodshot from travel, from pain, from the dream.

“I felt you pull away,” he whispered. “And I followed.”

Leia laughed softly. “You’ll follow me into death?”

“I already did. You just weren’t awake to see it.”

She clenched her fists. “I have to do this. The curse… I can’t risk slaughtering innocents.”

“And what if there’s another way?”