“I hurt Thom,” Ana said, and her tone was clipped and resolute and braced for impact.

  And I won’t lie, it rocked me back a step. But the response was ready, natural as a flower unfolding its petals. “Thank you,” I simply said.

  Her expression froze in place for a heartbeat, as if she’d bitten into ice cream when expecting mashed potatoes. “You’re thanking me,” she said slowly, “for putting a kid in the hospital.”

  “I’m thanking you for telling me,” I said, “and for saving my life from Thom when they tried to drag us into the Neverfound.”

  “No.” It wasn’t clear at first what Ana was rejecting, but a cold chill stuttered through me when I saw that she was angry. “No, you’re better than this. You hate violence, you hate death. You’re supposed to hate me.”

  I reached up to put my hand on Ana’s cheek. “Ana,” I swore, “I do not hate you.”

  “Someone has to.” She stepped back, my fingers sliding off her chin. “Because I don’t.”

  “Why does someone have to hate you?” I asked, and to my surprise I was starting to get frustrated. Not even because Ana had killed a client—I truly believed she wasn’t at fault. Why couldn’t she just see that I loved her and forgave her?

  “Thom is a person. They have friends. A family. We were supposed to save him, and I crippled him, and I don’t regret it.”

  “Then—Ana, I promise I’m not being contrary for the sake of it, but if you don’t regret it and I don’t hate you what’s the problem?” A gentle wind kicked up across the forest floor, leaves trickling around us in circles.

  “That is the problem!” Ana clutched at her forehead. “I don’t regret shooting a kid, and what the hell kind of monster does that make me?”

  “It doesn’t make you—“

  “And you’re supposed to be better.” I almost missed it, when the magic began to bloom. Her voice was tight, frustrated, but to my horror the first sign that she was becoming a spective was the way her skin bubbled as something began to blossom from beneath.“I know that I’m violent, Tsu. I know that I hurt everyone around me.”

  “No, Ana, that’s wrong. You don’t hurt everyone around you.” I reached out to touch her shoulder, but she jerked away.

  “Don’t tell me I’m wrong, Tsu.” Thorns slid out from under her skin, quiet and glistening with dew that made my eyes water with just the vapors it gave off. Her face, her beautiful face that she’d spent so long to attain, prickled and warped as flowers jutted out from her chin and upper lip, weeping purple pollen. “I’m hurting you now, aren’t I?”

  I don’t think I got angry, not exactly. But something inside me grew hot and bright, and I said, “So what if you are? I say that you are worth it to me. And who are you to deny me that?”

  She forced her eyes open, despite how much it must have hurt—her eyelids had began to swell and spike. “But I hurt them,” she repeated, as if I was slow for not understanding that this made her unlovable and hateful and worthy of abandonment. “You hate that.”

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  “I can’t stop you from saying what you believe about yourself,” I replied, “but you have no right to tell me how I feel, either. Yes, I hate violence. Guess what? I love you more.”

  “No,” Ana said, and her dreamlike readiness began to wisp away. She thrashed backwards, getting to her feet, and vines snaked from the surreal soil to drag her down. “No, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “I damn well do, Anachel. And I will keep. Fucking. Saying. It.” I shucked off my jacket, wrapped it around my hand, and grabbed her, even as she bloomed and wept sap that itched and burned at my skin. “Drag yourself into the earth and I’m coming with you, because I love you.”

  “I can’t stop it!” Ana started to panic, thrashing in my grip, and the roots pulled her down to her knees. It was all I could do to hold on—if she’d leveraged her training I would have been flung aside like a leaf. “Tsutarrah, let go!”

  “Do you think it means nothing, when I say it?” When she looked at me in puzzlement, her frantic flailing halting for a moment, I set my feet against the ground and hauled. “I love you.”

  “It’s… I…” She was still sinking, up to her hips now, but as her hand reached the floor she braced herself, and those arms held so much more strength than I could ever know. Her descent halted.

  “Do one thing for me, and if you still want me to, I’ll let you go.” I wrapped my hand in a jacket and grabbed her hand. Ana swallowed anxiously. “Look me in the eyes and say that you are loved by me.”

  She looked me in the eyes. Her fingers flexed against mine, but through the fabric of my jacket the caustic sap could not touch me.

  “You… love me,” she whispered.

  And I knew she didn’t quite believe it, not yet.

  But her muscles rippled, and with a tremendous crack, she pulled her legs free from the earth.

  I stumbled backwards, just a little, as she clambered to her feet, and reflexively she reached out to catch me before stopping herself, looking anxiously at her hands. But the moment was over. Any minute now, I’d see the thorns sliding from her skin and melting into nonexistence, as the mantle of spectivity lifted from her shoulders…

  Any… minute… now?

  “Tsu?” Ana said, her voice rising in panic as the deadly growths refused to fade. “Tsu, what’s happening? Why aren’t I returning to normal?”

  Oh.

  Oh, fuck.

  “Okay. Okay. We’ll figure this out. Let’s get you back to our world first, see if that helps,” I said.

  Ana staggered to her feet, and through my cloth-swaddled hand I steadied her. She smiled, just enough that it didn’t tear at her lips, and we stumbled back through the portal together.

  The unobtrusive office we’d entered through hadn’t changed a whit, although the portal dimmed noticeably as we passed through. But as Ana waited for the transformation to revert, hopeful, anxious, then resigned, I closed my eyes and thought.

  “We have to go back,” I concluded.

  Ana was already halfway to the portal when I grabbed her arm. Her skin was cool, even through the layers of protective cloth. “Wait. Let me explain.”

  “We need this job anyway, yeah?”

  “I know, but with you—like this—I would’ve said to take a day off in any other circumstances.”

  She shook her head. “I need to keep moving anyway, or I might just hit myself.”

  “Hey.” I adjusted the padding, placed it on her shoulder, and gave her a light nuzzle. She inhaled in surprise, and when she turned to look at me there was a faint shine to her eyes. “We’ll get through this. No matter what. Because—repeat after me—I love you.”

  “You… love me,” she repeated, almost awed, and perhaps it was just wishful thinking but maybe, just maybe, she really believed it this time.

  “Which is why we have to go back,” I concluded. “We’ll never see this universe again if we don’t, and if we want to figure out what’s happened to you… well, there’s no better answers than the people who ripped a hole into this world in the first place.”

  Ana nodded. “Then I’m in.”

  Scarred with roses and bleeding poison, my girlfriend stepped back into the forest that had ruined her. Resolutely, I followed.