“I don’t think she is right,” I argue. “I know nothing! And I don’t think Rebecca knows anything either.”

“Is it worth the risk?”

“Yes,” I insist, and I don’t bother whispering—don’t care if they hear. “Benson, every person I have ever loved in my life has been ripped away from me either by death or deception,” I say, flinging my hand out at the people I had come to love as Reese and Jay. “The chance to choose my own heart’s desire and be with the person I want is worth it.” This is my truth; he is my truth.

Sammi blinks, for once unruffled. “Tavia, I didn’t want to bring this out too, but you have to reunite with your partner,” she says flatly. “Or you’re both going to die. Forever.”

“What are you talking about?” I demand. I step forward, my chin raised. “I’m an Earthbound. My soul is immortal and tied to this earth for all time.” Rebecca’s voice again. I don’t push her away; she knows what she’s talking about.

“That’s what we’ve believed for thousands of years,” Sammi replies. “But thanks to a Reduciata Earthbound who came to us a few decades ago, we’ve discovered that’s not entirely true. We’ve tried to keep it quiet, but you need to hear the truth.”

I feel shaky and have to lean against Benson’s chest to stay upright. Though I can’t remember all my lives—any of my lives, really—I can sense a bedrock of truth that goes back thousands, maybe millions of years, that there’s always another day, another life, another chance to do better, be better. Even the hint of a threat against that shakes me to my very core. “My existence is dependent on my choice of boyfriend?” I snap, my voice dripping with disbelief.

Sammi looks at me strangely as Elizabeth steps forward. “You don’t remember why you have to find him, do you?”

I’m afraid to answer. To look stupid and dependent on them.

“This isn’t about romance, Tave. This about life and death—your curse.”

“The one for creating humans?” I ask shakily.

Elizabeth nods. “You know how the things you create disappear in about five minutes? Once you reconnect with Quinn, they’ll stay permanently.”

“Which is actually the less important part,” Sammi adds. “The powers of the Earthbound are like …” She pauses. “What’s the best way to explain this? They’re like a battery. And each lifetime you find each other is like charging that battery. Your powers become not only permanent, but stronger. And each lifetime you don’t connect, they weaken.” She glances at Mark and I don’t like the fear in her eyes. Not fear for me, fear of me. She’s afraid to tell me this. Afraid what I’ll do. “And like batteries, they eventually go dead.”

“No,” I say, dismissing her words. “We’ve existed since the beginning of time. We don’t just go dead.”

“You do if enough lifetimes pass.”

I say nothing.

It’s impossible.

“For centuries we’ve believed that the Reduciata are motivated by greed—mainly a desire for power. And while that is true, it’s worse than we thought. Both the brotherhoods keep meticulous records. The Reduciata discovered it first, but once we found out, it was easy to confirm. Earthbounds have some kind of finite source of power, and it takes a great deal of that power to reincarnate. If they don’t find their partner for long enough—replenish that source—eventually, they run out of the energy necessary for their soul to … migrate.”

I hold out my hands as if I can stop her from speaking. As though it won’t be true if she simply doesn’t say it.

“So eventually, when you die, you’re gone. Just like the rest of us,” she adds in a whisper. When I say nothing, she continues, probably as much to fill the awkward silence as anything. “That’s what the Reduciata are trying to do. They believe that if they can permanently kill enough sets of Earthbounds that their power will revert to the remaining gods. They’re trying to return themselves to the level of strength the Earthmakers—the Earthbounds before the fall—were originally endowed with. And they’ve done a fairly good job already.”

“How many?” I whisper.

“How many what?”

“How many lifetimes?”

Sammi hesitates. “Seven.”

The math is instantaneous. Two hundred years since I was with Quinn. “This is my seventh lifetime, isn’t it?”

Sammi nods.

“And Logan’s?” In my mind he has already reverted to his new self, his new name.

“As far as we can tell, his too,” Sammi confirms.

The message is brutally clear: if I run away with Benson, Logan and I both end as soon as we die.

And maybe the world perishes with us.

Five minutes ago, I thought I would give anything up for love—but now, will I have to give up love to save the world?

I let my head drop and Sammi interprets it as concession. “You won’t regret this,” she says, a flutter of excitement in her voice.

Before I can contradict her, she sifts around in her briefcase for a few moments, then steps toward me with something held between her palms. “When I first met you,” she begins, “when you were Sonya, you were so afraid of us. Afraid of being discovered by the Reduciata, especially. And then when you found out Darius had been killed, you … you never wanted to remember that life. At all. You wouldn’t give us anything to do a memory pull with, never told us more than was absolutely necessary. But one day I came in and you had been lying on the floor reading and, without thinking, you braided the edge of the carpet. It wasn’t much, but technically, you made it.”