The lighthouse's shine broke the deep darkness of the night and Vanessa sat on the beach, with her legs tucked in. The night air cooled her flushed cheeks and she sat there, alone. They had rung the bell where the lighthouse currently stood and at the site it had stood in Patton's time at midnight, but they still had an hour until the ship arrived. Everyone had scattered, collecting some final time for reflection before the three-day voyage began. It was in this silence, on the cold sand, that she revisited the upheaval of the day.

Anger emanated from her earlier conversation with Bracken and it infected all her thoughts of the day. She returned to it every time she strayed too far, the rage magnetic. She hated Bracken. Clean and simple. He had had absolutely no right to do that to her.

She drew shapes in the sand and breathed through her anger. She would get through this. She had to, in order to fight with a clear mind alongside Bracken in the coming days. Still. Putting aside the "rivalry," as Trask had called it, felt like a betrayal to all blixes everywhere. But, if Vanessa didn't join forces with the Fairy Kingdom at large, there wouldn't even be any blixes to betray soon enough.

"Mind if I take a seat?"

Warren appeared by her side, his hair finally cut and styled to recover from the Santa Claus look that had been afflicted on him in the months of knapsack isolation. Shock froze Vanessa's limbs but she unthawed her head enough to shake it. What was he here to say?

He sat down next to her, denting the white sand. She could smell his cologne and feel the warmth from his body. It intoxicated and terrified her. An affection rose from his simple presence, a testament to Vanessa's curse of never losing care for someone she had once loved. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him scrub at his scruffy face and eye the expanse of dark sea. He turned to look at her, and she flicked her eyes away, caught.

"We're mission partners again," Warren said. "For real, this time."

She swallowed the apprehension in her throat and chanced a glance at him. He looked at her. His gaze differed from their early days, for sure, but it lacked the anger and coldness she had come to know. It held curiosity.

This was her final chance to make amends with the one person she cared enough to do so with. She steeled herself, chasing after her jumbled thoughts like a desperate shepherd in a lightning storm.

"If it makes you feel any better, I was told to be myself and to try my best to be a good Knight," Vanessa said. "Our missions were realer than any mission I ever did for the Society."

When someone went into deep cover like Vanessa had, they didn't actually gain a cover—they shed it. For the first time, she had used her real name, her real driver's license, her real everything. Just not her intentions.

Warren hummed in the affirmative, evidently not quite believing her. "Speaking of, is it weird to be undoing years of work by trying to stop the Society?"

"No," the answer arrived quickly. The weight of her desire to be believed raised her heart rate. "Opening Zzyzx had never been my goal. My goal had always been freedom for blixes, and the Society had generally aligned with that. I hadn't even heard talk of the artifacts and demon prison until well into my training—and even then, mostly from extremists."

"But why join up with the Society specifically, then?"

Vanessa twisted her mouth to the side. "When you're a dumb, scared, runaway 17-year-old and an all-powerful super-secret organization says they can make all your dreams come true, you generally say yes to recruitment. Or, at least I did."

Warren turned to look at her, accusation absent from his face. In the chill of the midnight sky, she warmed under his small smile. It felt like the sky breaking open and the clouds retreating to allow sunshine through. It felt like someone was finally listening to her, asking questions to understand instead of accuse. His smile turned sheepish and he ran a hand through his hair. "I joined the Knights right out of high school. Teenagers really are something else."

At Vanessa's surprised laugh, the ice broke and a true, solid bridge spanned the chasm between them for the first time in years. "Tell me about it. Babysitting Seth has been the most harrowing mission of my life."

"Not that time we had to go into that volcano?"

"No, this has definitely been worse."

Warren laughed. Vanessa smiled. She had missed that sound. His true laughter. Not the sardonic scoff he treated people to when his disbelief beckoned.

It was this carefree, genuine laughter that she remembered in her dreams, that chased her into her waking state, reminding her of all she had had and then lost. But, it was here again. In front of her. Her hands grabbed at the sand, the granules falling through as she pursed her lips, the anger of the day returning as her mind wandered to their shared history. "Does it make it easier for you to believe me now that Bracken has verified my commitment?"

"Yeah." Warren shrugged. Vanessa bit her tongue before saying anything more. He raised an eyebrow and studied the downturn of her face. "Does that upset you?"

"Yes. But, I understand."

Vanessa really did. Unfortunately.

"I'm ready to start again," Warren said. He quirked his lips to the side. "Even though the world is probably ending soon. But, for what it's worth—hi. My name is Warren Burgess. I promise not to stain your vintage leather car seats."

"Let's not make promises we can't keep."

"That was one time."

"Do you know how gross your blood was inside my car? I had to get rid of the entire seat."

Warren covered his mouth like a scandalized church lady. "No."

"I did."

"Bleach didn't work?"

"I wasn't touching that even with gloves."

"I'm wounded."

"Good."

Warren smiled and stretched out on the sand, lying on his back with his eyes to the stars. "So, what did you get up to in the two years I was MIA? Unfortunately, I don't have a lot to share."

That was an understatement. That whole time he was catatonic, Vanessa had imagined Warren on some mission far away doing heroic things. But instead, he had been living his cottage dream with his brother as a caretaker. Well. Not really a dream. More like a coma.

"Well, I did mostly solo missions while you were gone. I did have one partnered mission with Dougan before he got promoted to lieutenant."

"That lucky bastard," Warren said. "Was the rest of the time good?"

Vanessa stared at Warren with an awkward smile. She knew what she had to say would dampen the mood and she had trouble figuring out how to move her mouth to make the words come out in an unclunky, chill way. He raised an eyebrow.

"That bad?"

She nodded and looked to the ocean. Without seeing him, she could speak better. "I tried to visit my parents after nine years of silence. They were dead. Had been—for several years at that point. I know I've never told you about them. I just..."

Vanessa trailed off, consumed with thoughts of her progenitors. She wondered how they had felt when they had encountered their own personal world-ending experience. In the moments before the car crash, did they know what had been about to happen? Had they regretted anything? Had they missed her? Had they thought of her even? Had they felt the same dreadful certainty that compressed Vanessa's lungs now?

She would never know. It really wasn't closure to have a death certificate. She wished viviblixes could bring back the real person, not just animate a corpse. She would give so much for just a minute. What would she do? Who knew. But, it would be something and it could be closure.

Vanessa looked back at Warren and cleared her throat. Empathy shone in his eyes and he nodded at her. He knew that wasn't the end. "I found out the Society had tricked me. When I was 18, a unicorn terrorized me for days on end and tried to kill me before Society agents rescued me. Only it turns out that the unicorn wasn't real—just a society agent. The same maneuver I ended up doing to your family."

She looked to the horizon. Waves crashed into each other. She felt the elephant in the room sit on her lungs. "I became involved with the Sphinx. As—as Bracken said. In another vessel of course but—" Her voice broke again and she swallowed the rest of her sentence. Shame coated her throat. "I found out the Sphinx's triple identity in a single night, and that was the same night I received orders to go to Fablehaven. Then, I saw you."

"Holy shit, Vanessa."

"Quite a couple of years, huh?" She meant it as a joke followed by laughter, but her body had different ideas and tears broke through. She didn't even realize it, the feeling so foreign, so unfamiliar. Something about Warren made her so vulnerable.

He pulled her into a hug and stroked her hair. She sobbed into him and held on so, so tight. He was so warm and safe and nice and she needed this. She hadn't known how much she needed this. She hadn't cried in so long. It was a horrific sensation, but necessary and each sob carried some weight off of her.

The ocean tide pulled back and the sounds of crashing quieted in respect of her sobs. The humid air clung to their skin but Warren wiped it away with her tears as he cradled her cheeks. He pressed a kiss to her forehead—chaste and sweet and loving. His arms held so much love—an emotional, a caring, a trusting love; not some cheap lust—and his whispered words held so much comfort and all Vanessa could think was that she could die in this moment and be happy.

Was it forgiveness? Maybe not quite yet. But, it was belief and understanding, which was so much more than she expected to have.

If the world ended tomorrow, as it very well might, Vanessa would be okay. Because they were okay. She finally had Warren again. For real-real, this time.