I always thought that one day, eventually, it would get easier for me to let Aiden walk out of my arms and into danger. This is part of what I signed up for, being with him. I knew that I would get a lot of practice doing it, and I already have. But it hasn’t gotten any easier. Not at all.

Maybe it never will. I think I just love him too much for that.

Roger is arguing with Aiden, but I’ve stopped hearing anything. I turn away from everyone and walk closer to the trees. As soon as I get myself a little space, I stop still and drop my face into my shaking hands.

I can’t bear to look at the cliff, the staggering drop beyond it. My heart is bleeding, imagining Aiden going over the side.

I almost can't believe that we spent most of tonight cuddled up together in the cozy warmth of his bed, safely asleep in each other’s arms. In less than a few hours, we went from there to here.

That’s what being with a Guardian means. Sometimes our lives will be disrupted by serious, life-threatening danger, and it can happen at any time. I’ve accepted this, because I love Aiden. But it’s precisely because I love him so much that this is so, so hard.

My heart is screaming for me to stop him. My body and soul are both panicking, beyond terrified at the thought of Aiden going down there.

More than that, he's going down there alone.

I want to go with Aiden to the end of every rescue. At least that way, if something goes wrong, we’ll be together. That’s the most important thing. But when it happens this way, I don’t even have that. This is so much harder for me than it would be if I could just go with him.

Between the howling wind and my heartbeat hammering in my ears, I couldn’t hear what Roger, Luca, and Aiden were saying. But I do hear them stop talking, and then, after a pause, I feel a huge, warm hand spread gently on my back.

I slowly turn around and look up into Aiden’s sweet, beautiful blue eyes. That sight alone is enough to nearly drive me to my knees, to make me beg him not to do this.

I take in a shaky breath, struggling hard to keep it together.

“Isn’t-?” I stop to clear my throat, but my voice comes out trembling, anyways. “Isn’t there some other way? Can’t you use magic, or…?”

I falter into silence. The answer is clear in Aiden’s eyes, and I think that deep down, I already knew. We don’t have time for Aiden to channel careful, precise magic, which is what we would need to rescue Hayes that way. One mistake with Aiden's powerful energy could destroy the ledge, could push Hayes over or destabilize him, could burn him with too much heat…

Besides, I know that Aiden wouldn’t do this if there was any other way.

Still, I want to tell him that there’s no fucking way he’s doing this. I want to fling my arms around him and beg him to stay with me, where he's safe.

But that would be pointless, a waste of precious time. Aiden is a Guardian, and he has to respond when a soul is crying out for his help. It's in his blood, his heart, his heritage. Doing anything to try and stop him won't work. It would only make this even more painful than it already is.

So I take a deep breath and throw all of my effort into staying strong. For a few seconds, I think I’m gonna do it. Then I abruptly lose the battle, feel myself come apart at the seams.

I close my eyes, drop my head so that Aiden can’t see my face. A strangled, anguished little sob escapes my mouth. I press my forehead into Aiden’s chest and clutch tightly to two fistfuls of his sweater, as if this might keep him here with me.

Aiden takes me by the shoulders and gently eases me back. He curls his knuckles beneath my chin, makes me look up at him. There’s a strand of soft, shiny hair falling into his eyes. I would burn down everything, the whole world for that one chestnut strand.

Aiden must be scared, too, but he’s staying calm for my sake. His blue eyes are unwavering as they look into mine, flowing with that radiant ice-blue light. His fingers are still and steady against my face.

I have no idea how he’s being so damn brave, faced with something like this. This is the same man who sometimes still gets so nervous around me that it makes him too shy to speak.

My heart staggers wildly, and I surge up onto my toes so I can reach Aiden's mouth.

“You - better - come - back,” I tell him, with a desperate kiss between every word.

Aiden’s arms lock around me. He pulls me to him, kisses the top of my head, and buries his nose in my hair. Takes a long, deep breath.

I allow myself a few precious seconds to hold him. Then I draw away and let him go, even though it's the hardest fucking thing in the world for me to do.

“Be careful,” I stammer, my voice breaking.

Aiden smooths a thumb over my cheek, gazing down at me with all his love held in his eyes. He finally says something, and the deep, rich bass of his voice nearly sends me to my knees.

“No tears, Linden,” he rumbles, right as one escapes and rolls down my cheek. "I'm coming back to you, alright?"

I drag my sleeve over my cheek, sniffling a little, and nod at him.

Aiden’s other hand had dropped to take mine. Now he gives my fingers a squeeze, and lets me go.

I follow him back to Roger and Luca, who are both looking at us with anxious eyes. I have no idea what Aiden said to them, but they don’t object when he holds out his hand to take back the rope. Luca hesitates, then hands it over without a word.

We don’t have a safety harness, so Aiden clips himself on by his belt loop, then winds the rope around his fist several times, gets himself a strong grip on it.

Roger has been struggling to not say anything, but now he gets a look at the expression on my face, and I guess he can’t help himself.

“Aiden,” he tries, “Come on, man - you can't - it's only the back of my hand that's hurt, I can probably-”

Aiden suddenly cringes with his whole face, lets out a sharp, staggering gasp. When his eyes blink open again, the magic in them is sparking and swirling even more frantically than it was before.

“No time for this,” he answers, shouting through the wind. “We’ve got minutes to save him, at most! Just - just don’t fucking let me fall!”

I can tell that Roger and Luca are both agonizing over this, but they know there’s no time to stand around arguing. Or maybe seeing the glow in Aiden’s eyes reminded them that he’s uniquely qualified for the job, even if they don’t understand how or why.

Whatever it is, they don’t push back. Luca gives Aiden's arm a squeeze, then heads back towards the tree to double-check that the rope is secure. Roger gathers up the rest of the rope and walks with Aiden towards the cliff. I follow them.

The wind is fucking unbelievable. We end up crawling to the edge instead of walking. Even standing up feels perilous, right now.

Keeping to a crouch, Aiden turns around, puts his back to the pitch-black abyss. He uses his free hand to grip the edge of the cliff. Then he takes a deep breath and carefully steps backwards, sinking the toe of his boot into the loose rubble that makes up the slope.

Roger is holding tightly to the bundle of rope, and now he gives Aiden some slack. Luca picks up the rope further back by the treeline, helps Roger hold onto it.

Aiden leans back slowly, testing the strength of the safety rope, of the team holding it. Very slowly, he brings his other foot down to find a foothold in the crumbly rock. The wind blasts against him, whips through his hair as he haltingly lets go of the cliff's edge.

I hold my breath, my heart beating painfully fast. I've seen Aiden walk on water, walk over burning earth. But if he falls, he has no surface below his feet to manipulate the temperature currents against. He's never tried to walk on thousands of feet of empty air. If he falls, I think - I think he falls.

But the rope stays strong and steady. Roger and Luca have Aiden supported.

Aiden lets out a heavy exhale. Then he opens his eyes, looks up at me.

I lean forward, take his face in both hands, and kiss him. Aiden kisses me back, then stares into my eyes when I draw away.

Neither of us says it out loud, but the I love you is abundantly clear in my gaze, and in his.

Fighting back tears, I let him go. I reach out past the edge of the cliff and take hold of the rope beyond where Roger is holding it, closer to Aiden. If the cliff edge wears through the rope and snaps it, I want to have hold of him.

Aiden takes another deep breath, looks down at the precipitously steep face of the cliff. Then he draws his boot out from the rubble and sinks it in a little lower.

Step by step, he begins his descent.

~~~~

My breath is frozen in my throat. I keep my eyes trained on Aiden, trying to ignore the icy fear clawing at my chest.

The going is agonizingly slow. Aiden has to be careful not to dislodge a heavy shower of rocks onto Hayes, and each step he takes loosens the rubble. The wind is slowing him down, too, throwing off his movements so that he has to stop and steady out.

He has one hand twined up in the rope, the other gripping it slightly higher up. It’s pointless for him to hold onto the loose rock. The only reason it’s supporting his feet is the sloped angle.

I'm at the front of the rope, Roger right behind me, Luca a few feet back from him. We feed the slack to Aiden as he descends, so that if he does lose his footing, he won’t fall down the whole length of the rope. This should make it easier for us to catch him, although I’m hoping with all my heart that it won’t come to that.

At least I can see him clearly. He’s lighting his own way, so he can see what he’s doing. His body is emanating a soft golden glow of Heliomancer light. Luca is too far back to see it, but Roger can. He’s staring with wide, stunned eyes.

As Aiden gets lower, he starts to move faster. The noise in his head must be on a steady rise, because I can sense him struggling to not let his focus slip, to not rush.

He's getting close.

My terrified heart is pounding in my ears, my stomach in tight, aching knots. The further Aiden goes, the more he seems suspended over vast nothingness. A glowing golden bright spot in the endless, unforgiving darkness.

Through the wind, I hear Aiden shouting something to Hayes, but he gets no response. Hayes remains perfectly motionless and silent.

My head snaps upright as a huge, heartstopping thunderstrike splits the air. Based on its earsplitting volume, it must have been right on top of us. I was so focused on Aiden, I didn’t even notice the preceding flash of lightning.

Aiden froze at the sound, clinging tightly to the rope. Now he starts moving again, going even faster than he was before. More rubble spills down from each foothold he makes himself, and some of it rolls down onto Hayes, who doesn’t react.

“We’re running out of slack!” Roger shouts.

I had been looking up at the clouds - they’re the darkest shade of charcoal grey that clouds can be, threatening to burst at any moment - but now I look back at Roger, and see that he’s right. We don’t have much more rope to work with.

I look down at Aiden again.

“It’s okay,” I shout over my shoulder at Roger. “He’s so close, he’s - holy shit-”

I shut all the way up, my lungs getting no kind of breath as Aiden touches down on the rock ledge. There’s a bone-chilling instant of uncertainty, but the ledge holds beneath Aiden’s weight, and Hayes isn’t dislodged by his arrival.

I let out a trembling exhale as Aiden carefully picks his way across the ledge to Hayes. He crouches down next to him, puts a hand on his back to hold him in place. Then he unwinds his other hand from the rope, and - unclips it from his belt. He clips it onto Hayes, instead.

Now Hayes is the one secured to us, the tree, the mountain. Aiden is the one attached to nothing.

Very slowly and carefully, with one hand in a death grip around the rope, Aiden begins to turn Hayes over. As he does, another brilliant flash of lightning cuts through the air, followed by a second crack of thunder.

I can barely watch this. I’m full of terror, so afraid of one powerful surge of wind that Aiden isn’t prepared for, one slip of his footing, one miscalculated movement. Every shift in the loose rock beneath his feet unnerves me completely.

Aiden turns Hayes onto his back, then bends over and gets his free arm tucked around him. There’s a pause, and then, in one swift movement, Aiden lifts Hayes up into an over-the-shoulder carry.

Hayes hangs limp over Aiden’s shoulder as Aiden wraps an arm around the back of his legs, securing him in place. Maybe not the best way to carry someone with a head injury, but I don’t see any other choice. Hayes still hasn’t woken up, and he can’t hold on.

Aiden winds his fist tightly around the rope again. He looks up at me, glowing softly, and - around the rope, gives me a thumbs up.

“He’s got him!” I shout, finally working a breath into my lungs.

Luca lets out a yell of relief. “Oh, my god!”

“Fuck yes, atta boy, Aiden!” Roger roars, leaning forward to grin over the side of the cliff.

But my heart is still frozen with fear. Aiden is far away, but even from here, I can see that the glowing blue magic in his eyes hasn’t gone away. It’s still there, casting light onto his nose, his cheeks.

It means that Hayes isn’t out of danger yet. And that means Aiden isn’t, either.

He won’t be able to get back up the cliff by himself. He’s got one hand twisted around the rope, the other arm locked around Hayes.

“Come on, let’s get them up!” I shout, trying to keep the tremble out of my voice.

Luca moves up towards Roger and me, keeping fast hold of the rope as he goes. He gasps when he reaches us, seeing Aiden haloed in magical golden light.

We cluster together at the edge of the cliff and wait for Aiden to get a foothold. The rope is much heavier now, with two people on the end of it.

I’m so incredibly hyper-aware of the fact that Aiden unclipped himself and clipped in Hayes instead. If his hand slips, if he lets go...

Aiden pushes off of the crumbling rock slope, and we all give the rope a hard pull, dragging him up higher. When we stop, he sinks his foot into the loose rock, catches his breath, and pushes himself up again. We wait until he's in movement, then give the rope another pull.

It takes the combined strength of all three of us, but with our help, Aiden begins to climb back up, using only the footholds he makes in the rubble.

He gets about ten steps up before it happens.

There’s another deafening hammer strike of thunder, this time with a simultaneous flash of lightning. Before the light can even fade from the sky, the sound begins. A distant, whispering shuffle that instantly swells into a roar.

I look up and see it barrelling towards us. A gigantic, raging wall of storm clouds, unleashing a torrential downpour of rain, forced along so fast by the wind that the droplets are falling horizontal, not vertical.

A second, equally massive cluster of clouds races along next to the first. It glows with lightning, shivers, and opens up, just in time to meet the one already pouring.

The two heavyweight cloudbanks meet in midair and meld into one apocalyptic behemoth.

The storm has arrived, and it’s coming right for us.