In the previous chapter: Rey and Kylo meet on Ahch-To and finally settle their differences. Then the First Order finds them.

Chapter 21

The next thing I knew, Kylo and I were seated across from each other in a small, dim cell. Our hands were shackled to the wall next to our heads, wrists immobilized inside stun cuffs bolted into the durasteel plates. Sinister red light emanated from a single panel mounted over the door. We were dressed in thin black robes and being held captive on a ship, judging by the stale air and an engine droning in the distance.

My tongue felt heavy and thick, and my head lolled to one side as if I were drunk. I looked across the room at Kylo, who was blinking like he'd regained consciousness at the exact same time as me. What had happened to us?

The door opened to reveal Snoke's looming form. He slid into the room like a spectre. The red light overhead illuminated the protruding bones of his face, casting shadows into his eye sockets and the hole in his sunken cheek. His visage was a skeletal nightmare.

I tried to speak, forcing words past my swollen tongue and numb lips, but my brain was still shaking off the artificial unconsciousness in which Snoke had kept us confined.

Snoke pulled an object from the folds of his robe, and fear squeezed my heart as he placed the Victive between myself and Kylo. The dark artifact held itself suspended a few feet off the floor, motionless except for sinuous patterns spreading across its surface like oil in water.

"Master of the Knights of Ren," Snoke said to Kylo in a deceptively gentle tone. "How you disappoint me. Much like Lord Vader succumbed to the call of the light, you have strayed from the enlightenment of my teachings. But you might yet be saved. Perhaps you only need additional… guidance."

Snoke twitched his fingertips. The slight motion was enough to make Kylo gasp and double over like he'd been punched in the stomach. He strained to breathe, his face going red as the Supreme Leader continued to torture him with the Force.

I was dimly aware of screams, which must have been mine because Kylo could only make hoarse gasps while Snoke's lips were pressed tightly together in a vindictive smile. A heartbeat later, the torment ended. Ren was hunched over, his chest heaving. Snoke clutched Kylo's chin in a bony, emaciated hand and wrenched his head upward.

"Your only salvation lies in the embrace of the dark side. It can give you everything you desire. Including her," he said, turning Kylo's head so he was forced to look at me. "Imagine her by your side. A twin to your power, a mirror of your own darkness."

Snoke pinched Kylo's chin tighter. "I am willing to overlook your failures this one last time. Vow to serve me and none other. Carry out my will in the name of the First Order as your grandfather did for the Emperor."

Kylo struggled against the Supreme Leader's grip and his twisted, crooning promises. He had willingly lived as this creature's slave for most of his adult life. I knew that part of him yearned to give in – to end the pain and doubt and return to the familiar, simple role of being a servant to this powerfully cruel being.

Kylo spoke in a voice as soft and lifeless as ash. "I will follow in Vader's footsteps. I will make the same choices he did." But when he lifted his head and met Snoke's gaze, resolve burned in his eyes. "Including the choice to destroy his master to save the ones he loves."

My heart soared with pride.

Snoke's lips curled in a sneer, and he tutted with contempt as he threw Ren's head to the side. "Then your final choice, my failed apprentice, is to decide which of you dies first. Make sure you consider that the other will be forced to watch."

My hatred for this evil creature finally burned off my sluggish mental fog. "You're sick," I spat. "I scavenged through trash for years and you're still the most horrible, vile thing I've ever seen in my life."

With three quick, aggressive steps Snoke turned, crossed the room and slapped me hard. My cheek went numb, then started to sting and burn as blood trickled back into the skin. Tears sprang into my eyes at the unexpected pain.

"Though I know many secrets of the Force," he growled, "there is one thing that shall always remain a mystery. And that is why the Force chose to manifest so strongly in such an undeserving child."

He raised his ancient, cadaverous hands toward my head.

I reached for the Force without hesitation. I'd been wary of its powers ever since my breach into the dark side, when I'd Force-choked Ren on Jakku. But this fight could not be won with words or lightsabers, so I'd have to trust my instincts – and more importantly, trust myself . Light flowed to my fingertips, and my hands flexed as I wove thick bands of energy around my body like plate armor to ward off the coming attack.

"Rey, no!" Kylo shouted.

I realized my mistake too late. Snoke wasn't attacking me with the Force. Instead, with inhuman speed he released my left wrist from its cuff and plunged my arm elbow-deep into the Victive's seething, viscous mass.

Experience told me that it was impossible to fall when I was seated with an arm still locked to the wall. But the jolt my body made when it connected to the Victive suggested a different kind of truth.

I felt like I was plummeting head first to the floor even though I knew I wasn't moving at all. The dark artifact latched onto my power and made a low, rumbling sound like an ancient machine groaning to life. It unravelled the beams of light I had fashioned as armor, stripping the power from my control with unnatural ease, and greedily sucked the light into its core.

I backpedaled and tried to cut off my connection to the Force, releasing the rest of my power into the web and shoving it away from me completely. Snoke sensed the shift in energy and curled his fingers. Blinding pain erupted from my eyeballs like they were being boiled in their sockets. The pain was so unforgivably agonizing that I couldn't help but scream and claw all the Force power toward me again, seeking any way to protect myself from the onslaught. Yet the moment the light reached my fingertips, the Victive snatched it away and added it to its growing reserve of power.

Kylo Ren's panic sparked through our bond, and I glimpsed his arm vanishing into the opposite side of the spherical Victive. One of Snoke's hands was trained on me, the other on Kylo. With his arms spread, he resembled the conductor of a vicious symphony, and we were nothing more than his instruments for the Force.

The room went blurry and my head began to throb as the Victive drained our power. Rivulets of sweat seeped into my eyes. I hunched my shoulders toward my ears, trying to pull my arm out of the Victive and curl up in a defensive ball. My muscles seized and ached from the strain.

Snoke swung his arms toward the Victive and darkness bloomed around his hands. The artifact emitted a high-pitched whine as he assimilated the Force power it now contained – the power it had reaped from us with single-minded gluttony.

A moment later, Snoke and the Victive vanished from the cell with a booming clap of thunder that made the room shudder around us. Pain exploded from the base of my skull like I'd been struck with a club. The inside of my head went numb. I couldn't feel Snoke, the Victive, or my bond with Kylo. Most terrifying of all, I couldn't feel the Force. When I reached for it, my mind passed through empty air.

A chunk of metal peeled away from the wall of the cell and vanished. I thought I was delirious when I saw several more pieces flake off the ceiling. Glittering stars peeked through the holes left behind.

The numbness had escalated into pressure that threatened to crush my brain out through my ears. Despite the pain, I managed to unlock my lone wrist still cuffed to the wall. I rushed to Kylo, fingers flying over the metal restraint still binding him to the wall. The instant both hands were freed, he swept me into a crushing hug that lifted me off my feet.

"Are you alright?" he asked, his face buried in my hair.

"The Force… our bond. I can't feel them."

"Snoke blocked us from the Force. I've never seen anything control this much power." Kylo pulled away from our embrace and gestured to the room around us.

The walls were pockmarked with holes, and a chill went up my spine as I realized I could see stars no matter which direction I looked. If we were being held captive deep inside a Star Destroyer, how could this room be surrounded by open space on all sides?

The skeletal remains of the ceiling and walls lurched and then fell away with a shrieking crash. Kylo and I huddled together on a platform floating in the middle of black space. In the distance, pinpoints of light steadily grew larger, drawn by a terrible mass of power vibrating underneath us.

"It's too much power in one place," I breathed in horror.

The massive, concentrated amount of energy was warping reality around us. The Force had dragged our minds underwater and submerged us in this surreal starscape. The approaching lights grew into fiery clusters of stars, though they weren't actual celestial bodies but masses of condensed Force power.

A group of stars shot past our platform, which rumbled and shook precariously under our feet. While the galaxy around us was an illusion brought to life by the Force, Kylo and I were still in very real danger.

Trails of light streamed in the stars' wake as they spiraled down toward something I couldn't see – something I didn't want to see. I chanced a look over the edge and almost wept in fright. We were suspended over a nightmare.

Snoke and the Victive were at the bottom of a gravity well so immense and powerful that it reverberated throughout the Force web for miles in every direction. The stars roaring past drowned out all sound except for a persistent guttural rumbling. It rattled my heart in my chest and resonated into the very core of my being.

Far below, the Victive had grown to a massive size. It seethed like a swollen, blistering black sun. Stars smashed into it from all sides, but they vanished under its murky surface with only a brief flare of light to mark their passing. Snoke floated a safe distance away, his own body enlarged and monstrous. His pale skin had turned pitch black. A halo of blinding light outlined his form.

Between the torture and fear, I hadn't stopped to wonder what Snoke was actually planning to do with all of the Force power he'd torn away from us. He raised his hands, still hanging in the very nexus of a storm of raging energy, and twisted his palms outward in a deliberate command.

A chorus of panicked screams rose in the distance, followed by the staccato percussion of blasters being fired. Fear shrieked through my veins. Snoke was seizing control of the Resistance soldiers – the same mind trick he'd used to massacre the Grylix tribe and the people in the marketplace.

I heard some of the soldiers shouting as they resisted, but others were too tired, weak, or demoralized to shake out of the Supreme Leader's clutches. Comrades turned blasters on each other while the base erupted in turmoil. " Fight it! Fight it! " Luke Skywalker's voice echoed.

I turned to Kylo, but he was looking overhead and my blood ran cold at the expression of fear on his face. A falling star was roaring straight toward our platform. I only had time to fling up my hands before the star crashed down all around us. Bright white filled my vision and I pinched my eyes closed.

Yet the impact ground to a halt, as if time itself didn't know who wrote the rules when it came to itself and the higher powers of the universe. The roaring subsided. I peeked out through my hands and looked around in awe. We were inside the star – cocooned by pure Force energy on all sides. Besides the mangled platform under our feet, empty white space stretched away in all directions to an invisible horizon.

I blinked back hopeless tears. I was blocked from the Force, stuck on this platform in the center of a dying star, and I didn't even know where the hell in time and space I currently existed.

"Knuckle up, you two! It's not over yet!"

My heart leapt into my throat as I spun around. It should have been impossible, yet… Han Solo stood in front of us, a familiar, good-natured scowl twisting his mouth as he stuck his hands on his hips.

He had slipped through the boundaries between life and death to appear like a mirage in this surreal reality. One look at Kylo's face nearly broke my heart. I yearned to say something to ease the tension between them, but the apologies weren't mine to give.

Han's scowl softened into a hesitant smile. "Yes, it's really me. Don't worry, kid. I'm not coming back to haunt you."

"I didn't – I shouldn't have –" Kylo cut himself off and swallowed hard, his eyes bright with tears. "I was wrong, about everything."

"I know. I still love you, Ben." Han gestured to the empty space around us. "I'm glad I get to see you both one last time through whatever mystical Force mumbo-jumbo this is."

Leia's teasing voice spoke from behind us: "You never did trust the Force."

I knew it was madness, seeing her and Han standing there next to Kylo. But I was wholly willing to lose myself to insanity at the sight of Leia's face lighting up in a broad, fond smile as her family was reunited at last.

A terrible thought struck me. "Leia, you didn't… Are you…?"

"No, I'm not dead." Her smile faded slightly as worry crept back into her eyes. "Luke helped me get here. Wherever here is. I had to see you all together one last time."

The four of us stared at each other, words insignificant against the monumental joy of sharing each other's presence, and the painful knowledge that it would never happen again.

Han shuffled his feet, uncomfortable with the mountain of silence. "Not that I don't appreciate our time together, but the three of you are going to join me permanently if we don't do something about that jerk." He pointed to the monster lurking under our feet.

Leia slipped into her role as General of the Resistance. "This artifact that you warned us about, Rey. Snoke used it to turn half of our soldiers and pilots against each other. Luke is protecting as many people as he can, but he can't hold out against Snoke much longer."

"You guys can handle him," Han said, practically scoffing at us. "You just have to work together."

Leia nodded. "Han is right. There's enough power here to wipe out an army. Can you turn it against Snoke?"

"No. He blocked us from the Force," Kylo said bitterly in his rumbling voice.

"Nonsense," Leia replied. "You wouldn't be here now if that were true. Your connection to the Force is the only thing that could have brought you to this place."

"He must've used a mind trick on us," I said, eyes locked on Kylo as realization dawned. "He made us think we were powerless."

"Have I mentioned how much I hate that creep?" Han grumbled. "Look, bad guys always have a weakness. Luke took down the whole Death Star with a torpedo. You gotta hit him where he's not looking."

My mind raced back to Snoke's memory, where I'd first seen him interact with the Victive, and our encounter just now in the cell. Something had been nagging me… something that Snoke had done – or rather, hadn't done.

Then it hit me: "Snoke never touches the Victive. If he did, I think it would overpower him."

"It would destroy him. It's our best chance," Kylo agreed, his shoulders stiff. It was no doubt odd to suddenly be allied with the Resistance and his parents.

Han clapped Kylo on the shoulder. "Give'em hell, son."

Leia broke down at the gesture, rushing forward and sweeping the four of us together in a tight embrace. My arms rose and encircled Han's shoulders to my left, and Leia's to my right. Our foreheads all knocked together and I inhaled the scents of skin and soap and sweat from three people I cared about more than anything in the world.

It was the first hug I'd ever had with a family, my family. I wished it could last forever, to make up for the lifetime of hugs I'd missed.

"Be safe," Leia whispered. "I love you all."

Time suddenly snapped like a rubber band. The empty, white space blinked out of existence. Han and Leia vanished, their spirits torn away from our temporary haven. Kylo and I were alone once more in the midst of the storm. The dull roar of stars being pulled to their death flooded my senses, but something else familiar and treasured beyond words came with it: the familiar tingle of Force energy humming along my skin like electricity. I was no longer blocked from using my powers, and felt a glimmer of pride at this victory over Snoke.

Before I could react, the falling star smashed apart the platform where we stood. I fell to my knees on the remaining scrap of the platform, while Kylo… Kylo just fell.

A panicked scream erupted from my throat as I scrambled forward, only to find him clutching the edge of the platform with both hands, his body dangling in the wind of the storm.

I knelt down and reached out my hand, but he shook his head.

"I have to go down there," he said, yelling over the roaring and rumbling of reality falling apart around us. "I'm going to push Snoke into the Victive."

"Kylo, you can't…" I said in a choked sob.

"Stay here and use your power to reinforce my shields. Just like we did with Potentium, okay? Promise me you won't follow."

The brittle determination in his eyes softened at my miserable expression.

"Rey, I love you. You saved my life. I'm coming back for you."

And then he let go.

Kylo plummeted through the storm, currents of power buffeting his body as he raced the stars to the bottom of the gravity well. He twisted forward into a graceful dive, palms flattened together and fingers pointed toward Snoke.

As I watched him fall, my chest ached as if my heart had burst out through my ribcage and plunged off the ledge after him. In that moment, I despaired that I'd never see him again.

Leia's voice echoed in my head from a great distance: "Don't give up! Keep fighting!" I knew she was talking to the troops at the Resistance base, but her message of courage reached me across the fabric of time and space. I stood and took a deep breath. Giving up simply wasn't an option.

I tore energy from the Force web, scraping it close using an unwieldy mixture of Jedi techniques, tricks I'd learned through Potentium and blatantly raw fear. The sudden surplus of energy overflowed from my mind and spilled through my veins. My skin seared with pain from the inside, as if the blood pumping through my skin was either white hot or deathly cold.

Without delay I directed the power down, speeding it along so it caught up with Kylo as he fell. It wrapped skin-tight around his form, layering on top of his own shields so his body shone in a mottled mixture of gray and gold.

Kylo was almost in range of Snoke, whose eyes lit up in maniacal glee at the sight of his former apprentice falling toward him. The ancient creature's body had grown to monstrous proportions. His black skin blended into the ocean of dark power that surrounded him. The Victive was suspended in front of him at waist level.

The Supreme Leader stretched his mammoth hand toward Kylo, eager to snatch him out of the air. Kylo aimed straight for the oversized hand, planning to use his momentum to propel it down into the Victive.

Realization clicked in Snoke's eyes, and with inhuman speed he whipped his arm back a fraction of a second before Kylo would have reached it. Unable to stop, or even slow himself down, Kylo plummeted straight through the surface of the Victive. The oily surface swallowed him with barely a ripple.

Snoke opened his cavernous mouth and laughed, his black lips peeling back from bloodless gums as his entire body shook with frenzied glee.

I stood there in stunned silence. Kylo couldn't be gone, his life snuffed out in the blink of an eye. I reached into the back of my mind, the place where the bond had always manifested most strongly, and nearly wept in relief. The glittering, golden trail was faint, but the bond was still there. Kylo was still alive.

I leaned cautiously over the edge, studying the roiling surface of the spherical artifact. As I watched, the Victive trembled and shifted ever so slightly in Snoke's direction. A second later the artifact shook a second time, lurching closer to Snoke. Kylo was somehow moving the Victive's incredible mass forward from the inside.

I had to prevent Snoke from realizing what was happening, but my own reserve of power wouldn't be enough. I looked around and realized I was surrounded by weapons on all sides: the falling stars that were actually compact bundles of pure Force energy, summoned from vast distances by the Victive's pull.

I shot a beam of golden light shot at a star falling near Snoke. It swerved and collided with the side of Snoke's head, bursting into a million glittering pieces in slow motion. Snoke's mangled jaw clenched together, strangling his gruesome face as his gaze riveted on me far above. He flung his hand up and my tiny platform began to crumble out from under me.

I latched on to another falling star and shot it toward Snoke. It smashed against his shoulder and exploded like a firework. I pulled more and more stars off their courses, pelting him as fast as possible. The Victive gobbled up the billowing clouds of stardust left behind.

My assault was miserably ineffective at harming Snoke, but as a distraction, it was perfect. Snoke was completely focused on tearing off jagged shards of the platform and fending off the stars I chucked at him like bombs. He failed to notice the Victive inching ever closer to him. I hoped Kylo's strength could hold out for just a little longer.

Then Snoke raised his giant hand and smacked one of the stars, shooting it back at me. Its passing shook the platform and I wobbled in its wake. My footing slipped and I was suddenly clutching the platform for dear life by a single hand.

Snoke reached for me, his mouth twisted in a terrible gaping grin. "I AM A GOD."

He failed to see the one final star speeding toward him from behind. It slammed into the small of his back hard enough to send him reeling. He fell forward, and as he looked down his eyes bulged in almost comic horror a split second before falling face first into the Victive.

The world went pitch black while the Victive turned a brilliant blood red.

The dark artifact latched on to Snoke with animalistic ferocity. Instantly, all of Snoke's muscles simply melted away. His skin sucked back against his emaciated skeleton like wet paper. Veins wriggled over his bones like worms.

A ray of light poured out of the scarred fissure on his forehead. Light beams burst from the ends of his gnarled fingers. Another crack emerged on his side. Suddenly, new rays of light shot out from all over his body, piercing his skin.

I watched in awe as the Force annihilated him from the inside out, the sheer scope of power too much for any living being to contain.

Snoke's screaming deteriorated into a continuous bellow of agony as his body began to deform. His feet bent straight upward at a highly unnatural angle, his ankles bulged, his fingers flared outward and curled over the backs of his hands. One of his thumbs was sheared off, and it began to orbit around him like a grotesque, fleshy moon.

Snoke strained against the pressure, but the Victive crushed him inch by agonizing inch. His hips popped and his legs broke and bent upward in a way that legs never, ever should, and then his spine snapped in half right below his rib cage. I hoped Snoke's disturbing, horrific screams would end the moment his head bent in the wrong direction, his skull meeting his spine and severing his trachea. But his wailing sobs continued, even as the bulbous planes of his face flattened into a grotesque and ruined mass of flesh.

He was still alive as the power packed in around his crippled and destroyed body. The entire mass of skin and bone compacted even further, jerking as organs popped to make more room, and bodily fluids began to leak out and form a revolting ring around him, joining the thumb in orbit.

Finally, Snoke's excruciating whimpers abruptly cut off as his brain matter literally turned to paste. The Victive utterly devoured what was left of his body – and then it erupted in a massive, spectacular supernova.

The Force web shuddered and convulsed around me, straining to reabsorb the power that Snoke and the Victive had unnaturally drained. I was caught in the aftermath like a flimsy raft in a cyclone.

The colossal shockwave tore through everything in its path, and before I could blink the power ripped into my body. My skin peeled up from my muscles, the blood boiled in my veins, and the fibers of my muscles unravelled from my bones. My vision was bleached to a pure white even with my eyes screwed shut as tight as possible.

It was pure agony as my body was carved out of this dimension and my cells ripped apart. My brain ran out of space to process pain. Something started to bend within my mind, and then it snapped – and everything went dark.

The pain faded and I curled into a ball, resting on a smooth, cold floor. I don't know how long I stayed that way, waiting for the shockwave to disperse into the Force web as the energy settled into its normal, natural grooves.

Finally, it seemed safe to open my eyes.

I sat on a glassy, mirrored surface. An ocean of darkness stretched away from me in all directions. Glowing red orbs trickled past my face, reflected perfectly in the mirrored floor.

I reached for Kylo through the Force. There was only an empty, dead spot in the back of my head, but somehow an answering pulse of energy echoed in the strange void all around me.

My heart shuddered in my chest as I finally recognized what the red lights were: fragments of Ren's soul, each one a piece of his consciousness which had been torn apart by the supernova and scattered throughout this surreal dreamscape. It was all that was left of him after the Force had obliterated his body and mind.

I choked down tears as I summoned a thread of Force power to my side and wove a blanket of starlight and shadow. The red orbs were cool to my touch as I solemnly plucked them from the air and wrapped them in the blanket one by one.

A thread of golden light flickered into sight at my feet. Even though the bond was faint and weak, I recognized it immediately, and started to follow it through the darkness.

I walked through the void gathering as many pieces of Kylo's existence as I could. The bundle of memories and thoughts in my arms never grew heavier, but the bond steadily grew brighter as I collected more fragments.

Finally, Kylo's body materialized out of the unending darkness. He was lying prone on the ground, eyes closed and hands resting by his side. He wasn't breathing.

I gulped down a sob.

I had to bring Kylo back from this strange, dead world. But while my desire to resurrect him may be noble, I worried that deep down my motivations were purely selfish. I was terrified of losing the man I loved, of being abandoned and reverting into the lonely scavenger from Jakku. And the mere act of bringing someone back from the dead seemed to teeter dangerously along that line between the light and dark sides of the Force.

Yet the universe was not starkly divided in light and dark, good and evil, I thought. Most people lived their lives somewhere along that continuum of gray. Perhaps the followers of Potentium had it right. Good and evil couldn't manifest solely through my use of the Force, but only in the intent of my actions. The hard part was balancing my access to the Force with the wisdom to know when, and how, to use it for the right reasons. The consequences of disrupting that balance were clear. I wouldn't forget Snoke's horrific disintegration at the hands of the Force for a very long time.

And while Kylo Ren had done terrible, evil things, the essence of his soul was good. It couldn't be wrong to save that part of him.

It wasn't wrong to love him.

I cradled the fragments of his life and knelt down by his side, and pressed the bundle against Kylo's still chest. The collection of memories and dreams shimmered as they slipped through his skin and settled somewhere inside the body he had left behind.

I touched my forehead to his.

'Please,' I begged into the haunting silence on the far end of the bond. 'Please come back to me. I've already spent most of my life alone. I can't spend the rest of it the same way. I love you.'

Everything went numb, and dark, and consciousness slipped away from me like a dream.

–

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–

My senses returned to me one by one. I rested on real, solid earth. A gentle breeze caressed my face. I twitched one eye open and saw a clear, endless blue sky. Then I tilted my head to the side and was greeted with the sight of something infinitely better – Kylo Ren lying next to me, eyes closed but steadily drawing breath into his lungs.

We were on Emmett II, in the mountain clearing below Skybreacher. I'd practiced meditation here countless times. It was the place where I'd first spoken to Kylo through our Force bond.

The First Order's forces were gone – either destroyed or retreated to the Unknown Reaches after the death of their leader. Plumes of smoke drifted from the Resistance base.

I sat up and smoothed my hand across Kylo's brow. The bond's normally vibrant strength was now muted and dull between us. Kylo was in a coma, his mind intact but fragile. I imagined falling head-first into a dark artifact wasn't good for anyone, not even a Force-user as powerful as Kylo Ren.

I breathed deeply, resolving to be patient while his fractured mind healed. He had promised to come back, and I would hold him to that promise.

I smiled peacefully, thinking of the million possible futures stretching out from this moment. No matter which path we took, with Kylo at my side I finally had a place in this galaxy where I belonged.

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Author's Note: Thank you so much for sticking with me to the end of this story. It's one of the coolest things I've ever written and I'm immensely proud of myself for finishing it.

If you enjoyed this story (or even if you only enjoyed some of it), I would love love love it if you left a few words telling me your favorite parts of the story. I would also appreciate feedback on the parts that didn't grab you as much or felt out of place. Feel free to write a review or PM me directly. Your honest opinion will NOT hurt my feelings and makes me a better writer, leading to (hopefully) better stories for you to enjoy in the future! Thank you!