The Sin System: My Wife is Envy

"Do you feel that," he said.

"Feel what."

"I don’t know. Something."

He said nothing for several more loops, watching whether it held. It got closer.

"There’s a..." he started.

"I see it," she said, already looking up.

"Veyra."

"It is nothing."

"You keep saying that." She didn’t answer.

"What did you do," he said.

"I did not do anything."

"You’re lying to me."

"I am not."

He looked at her for a long moment. She held his eyes.

"Fine," he said, quieter. "What happens when it cracks all the way through."

"I do not know," she said. "I think the dimension collapses."

"And you."

She looked at the white instead of at him.

"This prison was built for exactly one thing," she said. "Me. When I am gone, there is nothing left here to hold open. It ends."

"You mean you go somewhere else."

She didn’t correct him. That was the closest she came to a lie all loop.

"And me," he said.

"You were never supposed to be here. I think the dimension is letting go of what does not belong to it." She looked at him. "You go back."

"To the desert."

"To whatever comes after the desert. The door brought you in. The collapse will send you out."

He stared up at the crack.

"That’s not fair," he said.

"No," she said. "It is not."

"I don’t—" He stopped. "I don’t want to go back if it means—" He stopped again.

"I know," she said, and something in her voice wasn’t holding.

The loop reset.

She cut the notch before he’d fully gotten upright. Same spot. Same motion. When the white came back, they both looked at the tree at the same time.

The notch was still there.

[ERROR: PERSISTENT DATA DETECTED ACROSS RESET BOUNDARY.]

[LOOP AUTHORITY UNBOUND.]

"That’s new," he said.

"That is very new," she agreed, and did not look at him while she said it.

They didn’t speak for a full loop.

The loops got shorter.

She told him about the domain. Not the envy. The longing the original thing, before they renamed it.

"It is not a bad thing," she said. "People think it is, because it hurts. But you do not long for things you do not love."

"Four thousand loops," he said.

"Yes."

The crack spread above them. He took her hand. She looked down at their joined hands, then up at him.

"I have never been held," she said.

"That’s a sad sentence."

"I am aware. Hold me anyway."

He put his arms around her. For a moment she didn’t move at all. Then she lifted her own arms and held him back, and exhaled long against his shoulder.

"I have so little time," she said.

"You do not have to do anything."

"That is unhelpful."

"It’s all I’ve got."

He looked up at the crack spreading overhead.

"This wasn’t supposed to happen," he said.

"No," she said. "That is why it did."

"I love you," she said.

He didn’t answer right away.

"I know. I..." He stopped. Started differently. "Good. Because I love you too."

The crack spread.

The tree was the only color left in the world. Then the white came down.

She kissed him and the white took everything.

In the moment after, she stood in what was left.

"Well," she said out loud, to no one. "That happened."

She pressed two fingers to her own sternum, checking, the way she’d seen him do it without knowing he was doing it.

"Pathetic," she muttered. "Copying his habits already and he is not even here to mock you for it."

She thought about four thousand loops. About a boy who cut notches into things that couldn’t hold a mark until one did. Who argued about texture variance. Who named things directly.

"He would have hated this part," she said. "Standing around. He always hated standing around."

She thought about how little time they’d had.

"I finally understand my own domain," she said. "Four thousand years too late. Excellent work, Veyra."

She closed her eyes.

Let him come back. She opened them.

"That’s an order, my knight."

"No. That is... I do not speak like that." She pressed her lips together. "Apparently I do now."