A Bizarre Journey ep 30: A Wedding With Two Brides

I’m Loc.

A poor Saigon office worker who somehow fell into the middle of one of the worst romantic disasters in Greek mythology and, through a series of decisions I would strongly advise against repeating, decided to try changing the ending.

Because apparently having a normal job wasn’t enough.

And there are nights I remember because something beautiful happened.

This wasn’t one of them.

This was the night everything we had been trying to fix finally caught up with us.

By midnight, Corinth was asleep beneath a sky that looked far too peaceful for what was coming. The palace was preparing for a wedding. The streets were empty. Somewhere beyond the walls, the sea kept moving as if the world had not already decided to become a disaster.

Tram and I spent the first part of the night on the same storage roof, mapping the route in whispers.

Tram had already walked most of it in daylight.

There was a narrow service path behind Medea’s house that connected to a dry creek bed, then to the outer orchard wall, then to a section of the city wall that stayed under-guarded between the second and third night watches.

From there, if the notebook still allowed movement between stories, we would simply keep walking until the pages changed.

Simple on paper.

Terrifying in practice.

“You’ll need to keep her at the front of the house,” Tram said. “Long enough for me to get both boys through the back and down the creek path. If she hears anything and goes inside, it’s over.”

“How long?”

“As long as you can.”

I looked at the dark shape of Medea’s house in the distance.

“I can work with that.”

~~~•••~~~

What I could not work with was the quality of my own writing under pressure.

I had five minutes and a scrap of parchment borrowed from a sleeping scribe. The poems that resulted should never have been allowed to exist. They were the spiritual successors to the Valentine’s disaster, except worse, because this time I was sober and still produced lines like “Your rage is a dragon I willingly burn beneath” and “Forgive the fleece-thief who stole a heart and returned only regret.”

I hated every word.

I used them anyway.

I walked up to the front gate of Medea’s house carrying a small oil lamp and the terrible parchment, and I began.

First I bowed.

Deeply.

Then I cleared my throat and read the first poem in the most formal Greek the story had given me.

Medea appeared in the doorway before I finished the third line. She stared at me the way people stare at a collapsing building.

I bowed again and started the second poem.

“Jason,” she said, voice flat with disbelief. “What are you doing.”

“Apologizing.”

“With poetry.”

“Yes.”

“In the middle of the night.”

“It felt important.”

She looked at the lamp. At the parchment. At the man who had publicly humiliated both of them in the square earlier that day and had now returned with rhymes.

I started the third poem before she could close the door.

It was the one that compared her eyes to “twin eclipses swallowing the coward sun of my betrayal.” Even the night insects seemed to pause in judgment.

Medea stepped fully into the courtyard, arms crossed, expression oscillating between rage and a kind of horrified fascination.

She did not go back inside. She did not call for the servants. She simply stood there and watched me destroy the art of language one line at a time.

I bowed after every poem.

I invented new ones when I ran out.

I apologized for the Golden Fleece, for the voyage, for the marriage, for the exile, for things the real Jason had done and things I had only worn for three days. My voice cracked on the particularly bad metaphors. A dog started barking two houses away, possibly in protest.

All the while I kept my body angled so that Medea’s attention stayed locked on the ridiculous spectacle at her front gate.

Behind the house, unseen, Tram would be moving.

I had no way to know if it was working.

I only knew that if I stopped talking, Medea would turn around, and everything would end.

So I did not stop.

I bowed again, raised the parchment under the lamp light, and began a new verse about how even the gods wept at the sight of my poor decision-making.

Medea put one hand over her eyes.

But she did not leave.

And that, for now, was enough.

I ran out of ideas somewhere past the twentieth verse.

The last coherent one had compared my regret to “a thousand broken oars rowing through the sea of my own stupidity.” After that the words simply abandoned me. Medea was still standing in the courtyard, arms folded, watching with the expression of a woman who had seen monsters, betrayal, and exile, and had still not expected this.

So I improvised.

I dropped to both knees.

I pressed my forehead to the dirt.

I announced, in the most formal tone I could still manage, that I would remain in this position until she believed I was sorry, even if the sun rose and the wedding began and the entire city walked past me on their way to the ceremony.

Medea stared down at me for a long, terrible moment.

Then she made a sound that was almost a laugh and almost a curse.

“You are pathetic,” she said. “Even more than I remembered.”

She turned and walked back into the house, the door closing behind her with a finality that suggested she would rather face exile than another stanza.

I stayed on my knees until the sound of her footsteps faded.

Then I stood, wiped the dirt from my forehead, and ran.

Tram was already at the meeting point behind the orchard wall, both boys beside her. The older one held a small cloth bundle. The younger one was still rubbing sleep from his eyes. They brightened when they saw me.

“Father!”

The word still hit like a blade.

I crouched to their level, heart slamming against my ribs.

“Listen,” I said, trying to sound calm and failing. “We’re going on a special journey. A secret one. Just the four of us. Like an adventure before the big ship sails.”

The older boy frowned.

“Mother said we have to take gifts to the princess in the morning.”

“The gifts can wait. This is more important. We’re going to see the stars from outside the city. And I’ll teach you a new game when we get there.”

The younger one tilted his head.

“Will Mother come?”

Tram’s face tightened in the dark.

I forced the lie out as gently as I could.

“She’ll meet us later. But right now we have to be very quiet and very fast. Can you do that for me?”

They both nodded, solemn and trusting in the way only children could be when the person they called Father asked them for something.

The trust burned worse than any accusation Medea had thrown at me.

We moved.

Tram led. I carried the younger boy when the path grew uneven. The older one held the edge of my tunic and refused to let go. We used every ridiculous method we had discussed: dampening our clothes in the creek to dull our scent for the dogs, rubbing crushed olives on our skin because Tram had once read that it confused tracking, wrapping the boys in dull servant cloaks that were three sizes too large so they looked like walking laundry bundles.

At one point we crouched behind a stack of amphorae while a night watchman walked past, the younger boy’s muffled breathing the only sound in my ears. At another we crawled under a low cart and waited until the drunk voices on the other side faded.

For a short while it almost worked.

Then the story remembered us.

We were halfway along the dry creek bed, the outer wall visible under the moon, when torches flared ahead and behind at the same time. Metal clinked. A voice I recognized from the palace shouted the name the myth had given me.

“Lord Jason! By order of the king, stop where you are!”

Guards emerged from both directions, more than I could count in the dark. Someone had noticed the children were gone. Someone had noticed Medea’s household was too quiet. Someone had put the two facts together faster than we had moved.

The older boy pressed against my side.

“Father?”

I looked at Tram across the small distance between us. Her face was calm in the way it only became when every exit had already closed.

The guards closed in.

We had run exactly as far as the story was willing to let us.

And true to every clumsy effort we had ever made together, it was not far enough.

~~~•••~~~

They separated us from the boys at the palace gates.

The older one tried to run back to me. A guard caught him around the waist and lifted him off the ground while he called for his father. The younger one only cried, small confused sounds that followed us long after the doors closed.

I watched until the last flicker of their cloaks disappeared toward the part of the city that still belonged to Medea.

Then there was nothing left to watch.

They put us in the same lower cell block, though not the same cell at first.

Jason, even a disgraced one, still carried enough weight that the guards hesitated to treat him like a common criminal. I was given a dry stone room with a bench and a single barred window that looked onto an inner wall. Tram was taken further down the corridor, where the air smelled of damp iron and old fear.

I sat on the bench and listened.

For a long time there was only the occasional footstep and the distant sound of someone coughing in another cell. Then the footsteps returned, heavier, and stopped outside the door where they had taken her.

I heard a man’s voice explaining, almost politely, that a servant who helped kidnap the future king’s children could not expect the same mercy as a confused prince. I heard the soft clink of tools being set down. I heard Tram’s breathing change.

I was on my feet before the first real sound of pain left her.

When the guard opened my door to tell me to sit back down, I hit him hard enough that his head cracked against the stone frame. The second guard came running. I didn’t try to escape.

I only made enough noise, enough resistance, enough of a problem that they had no choice but to drag me down the same corridor and throw me into the same space where they were preparing to make an example of a servant.

Tram was on her knees, wrists already bound to an iron ring set low in the wall. A thin line of blood ran from the corner of her mouth. Her eyes found mine immediately.

“You absolute idiot,” she whispered.

“I know.”

They didn’t bother with speeches after that. A prince who attacked his own guards in defense of a criminal servant was no longer entitled to special treatment. The rest of the night became a long, blurred lesson in how little the story cared about the difference between Jason and the man wearing his face.

Through it all, while the pain came and went and the cold stone leached the heat from my body, one thought refused to leave:

The children were back with Medea.

The gifts were still going to be prepared.

Morning was still coming.

And I still had not found a way to stop any of it.

~~~•••~~~

They brought us into the main judgment hall just after sunrise.

My legs barely held. Tram walked with the rigid control of someone who had decided pain was simply another fact to carry. The hall was already full — advisors, guards, a scattering of nobles who had come to watch the fall of a hero. King Creon sat on the raised chair, Glauce standing to one side of him in pale morning silk, her face pale with confusion and something that looked like hurt.

The boys were not present.

Medea was not present.

Only the consequences remained.

Creon’s voice was calm, almost tired.

“Jason, son of Aeson. You attempted to steal the children of the Colchian woman on the eve of your marriage to my daughter. You assaulted the men who stopped you. You protected the servant who aided the crime. Give me one reason the law of Corinth should not treat you as it would any other man who has betrayed this house.”

I lifted my head.

Every plan we had made was already ash. The poems, the public apology, the midnight escape, the refusal to hand Medea over — all of it had led to this stone floor and this quiet, waiting king.

But the ending had not happened yet.

The dress had not yet been delivered.

The children were still alive.

I met Creon’s eyes and, through the ringing in my ears and the taste of blood in my mouth, began to speak.

“Because—because killing me doesn’t actually… fix the thing you’re scared of.”

My voice cracked on the last word. Someone in the hall shifted. I kept going before the silence could swallow me.

“You think I took the children because I’m still—still hers. Like I’m some loyal dog running back. I’m not. I took them because I looked at her face yesterday and I knew. I knew what a person looks like when they’ve already decided the world doesn’t get to keep anything else.”

I laughed once, short and wrong. It sounded unhinged even to me.

“You want a clean wedding. A clean prince. A clean city. Fine. Execute me this morning. You’ll get a very inspiring corpse and a story about how the hero lost his mind right before the happy ending. And tomorrow you’ll still have her outside your walls with nothing left to lose. That math doesn’t work. Even I can see that, and I’m currently failing at basic standing.”

Creon’s eyes narrowed.

“You speak of safety while having created the chaos yourself.”

“Yes. Correct. I created it. Congratulations to me.” I dragged a bloodied hand through my hair and immediately regretted it. “I created it because I saw the edge of something and panicked like an idiot. You’re looking at the same edge right now and calling it an exile decree.”

“She’s not going to walk out of here quietly. You know it. The whole city knows it. They’re just hoping the new marriage is loud enough to drown out the sound when she finally snaps.”

My words were tumbling too fast. I couldn’t stop them.

“I’m not asking you to like me. I’m not even asking you to trust me. I’m asking you to notice that a dead prince is decorative and a living one is still useful. Keep me under guard. Chain me to the wedding platform if you want. Make me smile until my face breaks. But if you kill me now, the first thing your daughter inherits from this house is a body and a warning about what happens when people become inconvenient.”

I gestured vaguely at Tram without looking at her, because if I looked I would stop being able to speak.

“And her—she followed an order. My order. That’s on me. You want to punish someone for the kidnapping, punish the person who decided it was a good idea at midnight like a complete—”

I bit the sentence off before the sarcasm could dig my grave any deeper.

The hall was very quiet.

Creon studied me the way people study something that might still be dangerous even after it’s been beaten.

“You argue like a man who is drowning and trying to negotiate with the water.”

“That’s… accurate,” I admitted.

Another long silence.

Finally Creon leaned back.

“The wedding proceeds. You will stand beside my daughter under full guard. You will speak the vows. You will give this city the image it requires. After that, your value will be reconsidered.”

His gaze moved to Tram.

“The servant remains a servant. She has no political weight and no title to hide behind. She will die after the ceremony. Publicly. So the rest of the household remembers what loyalty to the wrong person costs.”

The words landed with the finality of a door closing.

I tried to speak again. Creon raised one hand and the guards were already moving.

As they pulled us apart — me toward the upper chambers, Tram back toward the dark — I caught her eyes for half a second.

Hours left.

The dress was still coming.

The children were still alive.

And the only thing I had managed to buy with all that stuttering, sarcastic dread was a little more time and the privilege of watching the ending arrive from the front row.

They left me in a clean upper room with a basin of water and a fresh tunic I didn’t put on.

Outside the door, two guards stood with the bored patience of men who had already been told the prisoner would not be allowed to miss his own wedding. Sunlight moved slowly across the floorboards. Somewhere in the palace, musicians were beginning to tune the instruments for a ceremony that still believed it would end in celebration.

I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at my hands.

Responsibility.

The word had followed me for months like a debt I kept trying to pay with the wrong currency.

I thought of Perfect Loc.

Quan had built him out of borrowed compliments and carefully edited stories — a version of me that said the right things, arrived on time, never made a mess anyone else had to clean up.

For a while the city had preferred that man. Even I had almost believed he was the improved edition. Then the whole construction collapsed in public, and I ended up locked in a filthy bathroom with my back against the toilet’s lid, listening to the homeless man on the other side speak like someone who had already survived every version of losing.

He had said responsibility was not the polished story other people told about you. It was the moment you stopped waiting for a cleaner version of yourself to arrive and simply picked up the thing that was already breaking.

I hadn’t fully understood him then.

I thought of the two boys who had run at me with wooden swords and called me Father like the word still meant shelter. I thought of the way the younger one had held the edge of my tunic and waited to be told what the next part of the adventure was.

I thought of Glauce’s face in the judgment hall — young, hopeful, still trying to believe the man she was about to marry was only confused and not already a wound.

And I thought of Tram.

Tram sitting next to me and laughing at jokes that did not deserve it. Tram in Vung Tau teasing me while the sea kept its own counsel. Tram on another roof under Corinthian stars, listening to me promise I would not walk away this time. Tram on her knees in a lower cell because she had followed that promise into a kidnapping that failed.

The sunlight reached my feet and kept going.

I sat there until the noise of the preparations outside thickened into something that sounded almost like joy.

Then I stood up.

I did not put on the clean tunic.

I walked to the door, waited until the corridor beyond fell briefly quiet, and began the short, irreversible journey toward the cells.

~~~•••~~~

The two guards outside the lower cells straightened when they saw me.

“Lord Jason?” the older one said, confused. “You should be in the preparation chambers. The ceremony—”

“I know where I should be,” I cut in, voice dry enough to scrape. “I was also supposed to be a reliable husband, a political asset, and a man who doesn’t spend his nights writing apology poetry in the dirt. We are all adjusting our expectations this morning.”

They blinked.

I kept talking before either of them could recover.

“The king has revised the servant’s sentence. Temporary stay of execution. He wants her present at the ceremony as a living reminder of what disloyalty costs — standing in full view of the guests so the lesson lands properly. I am to escort her myself. Immediately. Unless you would like to go upstairs and explain to Creon why his last-minute theatrical justice is being delayed by protocol.”

I delivered the entire speech with the exhausted irritation of a man who had already lost every argument that mattered and was now simply trying to finish the schedule. The sarcasm did most of the work. The rest was pure dread held very still.

The younger guard actually looked over his shoulder toward the stairs, as if the king might appear and confirm it.

I sighed, loud and long.

“Or I can stand here while the wedding music starts and you two decide how much you enjoy the sound of royal disappointment. Your choice.”

Thirty seconds later the cell door opened.

Tram stepped out, wrists still marked, face pale but alert. She took one look at my expression and asked no questions.

We walked until the corridor turned and the guards fell out of sight.

Then I stopped.

“I know what to do,” I said.

Tram searched my face.

“Loc—”

“You’re going to the exit we mapped. The orchard wall. The under-guarded stretch. You don’t wait for me. You don’t look back. If the notebook still has a door, you take it.”

“What about you?”

“I’m going to the palace.”

“For what?”

I met her eyes.

“The clothes.”

Understanding hadn’t reached her yet, but something else had — the same quiet decision she had made on the roof under the stars. She didn’t demand the full plan. She simply nodded once, sharp and final.

“Don’t die before you get there.”

“I’ll try to keep it consistent with our usual success rate.”

We split at the next junction.

The palace was already swelling with noise when I reached the upper corridors — musicians, attendants, the thick scent of ceremonial oils. No one stopped the bruised, under-dressed Jason moving with a specific kind of urgency. They simply assumed the bridegroom was late and stressed and possibly still half-mad from the previous night.

I followed the sound of women’s voices toward the final preparation chamber.

The door was half open.

Inside, Glauce stood in the center of a small circle of attendants. In her hands she held the dress — deep fabric that caught the light with an oily, beautiful sheen — and the delicate golden crown resting on a cushion beside her. She was smiling, nervous and radiant, turning slightly so the others could admire how the material moved.

The children were nowhere in sight.

They had already delivered the gifts and gone.

I stepped into the doorway before she could lower the dress over her head.

Glauce looked up.

Her smile faltered into confusion.

“Jason…?”

Behind me, somewhere deeper in the palace, the wedding music continued to rise, completely unaware that the story had finally reached the edge of its oldest wound.

I didn’t think.

I crossed the room in three uneven steps and tore the dress out of Glauce’s hands so hard the nearest attendant screamed.

The crown followed a second later — snatched from its cushion like I was robbing a market stall instead of stopping a royal wedding. Gasps filled the chamber. Someone dropped a tray of jewelry. Glauce stumbled backward, pure shock written across her face.

I stood in the center of the circle holding a poisoned wedding dress and a golden crown, breathing like I had just run through every bad decision of my life at once.

“What are you doing?” Glauce’s voice cracked. “Jason—those are mine—”

“Not anymore,” I said, and the words came out rougher than I intended. “Congratulations. You just got saved by the worst possible version of your future husband.”

Before anyone could move, I shoved my arms through the sleeves of the dress.

It was too narrow in the shoulders and far too long. The fabric caught on the cuts the guards had left across my arms. I jammed the crown onto my head anyway. It sat crooked. I probably looked like a man who had lost a bet with the gods and decided to double down.

Attendants lunged. I stepped back, nearly tripping on the hem, and raised both hands like a criminal caught mid-theft.

“Stay there. Seriously. This is already the most humiliating thing I have ever done and I once read apology poetry to a woman who wanted me dead. Do not make me add ‘fought bridesmaids’ to the list.”

The poison was already warm against my skin.

I felt it begin — a slow, blooming heat under the fabric, like someone had lit a coal directly against my chest. My vision stuttered. I still kept talking, because if I stopped I would have to notice that I was dying in a dress.

“Tell Creon the past didn’t stay removed,” I said, voice fraying. “Tell him the Colchian didn’t need to finish the job. Tell the city their hero finally did one useful thing and it still looked ridiculous.”

The heat climbed into my throat.

Somewhere beyond the palace walls, I hoped Tram had already reached the orchard and the under-guarded stretch of wall. I hoped the notebook still had a door left open. I hoped she would understand why the plan had never included me walking out with her.

I had spent months trying to become someone who didn’t leave the breaking things for other people to carry.

This was the only version of responsibility I had left.

“For what it’s worth,” I managed, and the words were no longer for the screaming attendants or the frozen princess, “I finally sat at the table long enough.”

The poison reached my knees.

The crown slipped. The dress suddenly weighed as much as a collapsed future.

I went down hard on the marble, the sound of it lost under the explosion of chaos that tore through the chamber — shouts, running feet, someone calling for the king, someone else crying the princess’s name.

The poison was already a living thing under my skin, crawling up my ribs in bright, methodical waves. I could feel my hands beginning to curl on their own.

In that world of white and red, my mind began filling with the people I loved.

I saw Quan first, bouncing around Quynh like an overexcited puppy who had somehow discovered Greek mythology and decided it was a personality.

Quynh was there too, adjusting her camera with that familiar little smile, already mumbling some nonsense in Greek as if the gods themselves had personally asked for her commentary.

Then Minh.

Somewhere in the background, still rolling around on the floor and wrestling with whatever revolutionary invention he had decided was absolutely necessary that week.

And Tram.

She stood beneath the sunlight in her hoodie, her short hair tucked neatly behind her ears. She looked annoyingly beautiful for someone who spent half her time mocking Quan’s complete lack of self-control and the other half arguing with Quynh about Greek mythology like the fate of civilization depended on it.

For a moment, none of it hurt.

Then a question surfaced through the haze.

Had I done the right thing?

Or had I simply made another impulsive decision because I was terrified and running out of options?

I didn’t know.

Maybe I never would.

But strangely, I didn’t regret it.

A few months ago, I wouldn’t even have left my sofa without complaining about the ceiling fan making too much noise.

Now I was slowly burning to death in a poisoned wedding dress in the middle of an ancient Greek palace.

Personal growth is weird.

The thought almost made me smile.

Almost.

My body felt lighter than it should have. The pain was still there, but somehow it had become distant, like it belonged to someone else.

I let out a slow breath.

Then, with what little energy I had left, I closed my eyes.

Or tried to.

They wouldn’t quite shut.

I blinked.

Once.

Twice.

The noise around me seemed to fade.

The screaming.

The footsteps.

The panic.

Then the crowd parted.

Not normally.

Wrongly.

And through the gap, I saw her.

Tram.

She should have been far away. Instead she stood in the entrance of the chamber with her servant’s dress torn at the sleeve and her eyes already full of the understanding I had hoped she would never have to carry.

She had seen the dress on my body.

She knew.

I tried to speak her name. What came out was mostly air.

She crossed the room anyway, dropping to her knees hard enough that the impact echoed. Her hands hovered over me, shaking, afraid to land.

“You idiot,” she whispered. “You absolute, irreversible idiot. Why didn’t you just take them and run? We could have left together. We could have—”

I dragged in enough breath to answer.

“Because she would have killed them anyway.”

Tram’s face fractured.

“If the gifts disappeared,” I managed, “Medea would still need to wound Jason. The children were the only thing left that could reach him. I couldn’t… I couldn’t leave her that door..”

“..This way the poison stops here. With me. The boys stay breathing. That’s the only version that didn’t end with them on the floor instead.”

Something in her expression broke so quietly I almost missed it.

Then the next wave of poison arrived and I couldn’t stop the sound that left my throat. It was low and involuntary and humiliating. My back arched against the stone. Tram made a small wounded noise and leaned closer.

“Don’t,” I forced out. “Don’t touch—Tram, the fabric’s still—”

“I know.”

“Then run. Please. Quan needs to know his love advice is a public hazard and he should stop giving it. Minh needs to know the chaotic inventions actually mattered — they kept me alive long enough to reach this stupid dress. Quynh needs to keep the mythology. Tell her the stories are allowed to hurt and still be worth it. Tell them I said it. Then go.”

My vision was tunneling. The crown had fallen somewhere near my shoulder. The dress felt fused to my chest.

Tram did not go.

She looked at me the way she had looked at me back in high school, on the sea wall in Vung Tai, in her moment of vulnerability under the rain storm— like she had already finished the calculation and the answer was the same every time.

Then she reached out and pulled me into her arms.

The poison found her the moment her skin met the fabric. I felt her body jolt against mine, a sharp, startled intake of breath that turned into a controlled, furious kind of acceptance. She settled my head against her shoulder the way someone settles a thing they have decided not to put down again.

“Why?” The word scraped out of me. “I told you to—”

“I lied,” she said.

Her voice was steady even as the heat began to climb her arms.

“When I said I wanted you to change. When I said I needed the improved version. I lied. I loved the brooding, sarcastic disaster who told terrible jokes at the lunch table and lost to his own friends’ poetry and still sat down the next day like nothing could move him.”

She paused to catch a breath. Her embrace still felt comfortable, strangely comfortable despite the pain crawling inside of my chest.

“I loved the man who panicked through every important conversation and still showed up. I never wanted Perfect Loc. I wanted you. And I’m not letting you finish this part alone just because you finally learned how to be responsible.”

I tried to laugh. It came out broken.

“You’re so bad at self-preservation.”

“You’re one to talk,” she whispered. “You put on a poisoned wedding dress in front of an entire royal household. That’s not responsibility. That’s performance art.”

“Still made you stay.”

“Unfortunately.”

The fire under our skin was no longer separate. It moved between us like a shared language. Somewhere far above, people were still screaming. The sounds felt thinner now, less important than the weight of her forehead against my temple and the way her fingers stayed locked in the back of my hair even as they began to shake.

“Next time,” I murmured, “I’m choosing a myth with less fire.”

“Next time,” she answered, “I’m choosing a man who doesn’t think dying in bridal wear is a viable strategy.”

“You didn’t hate that man.”

“I don’t.”

“Idiot.”

“Shut up, Poetry Cat.”

The white heat rose. The marble, the crown, the shouting palace — all of it thinned into a single bright edge. I held on to the sound of her breathing for as long as the story allowed.

Then the darkness came for both of us at once, and the last thing I felt was the curve of her smile against my mouth like a secret the myth never managed to take.