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“I don’t understand,” he said.

“That’s not surprising,” she replied, stepping away from him. He heard the click of her heels as she moved farther down the tunnel. Her skirts trailed behind her, more of those shimmering golden leaves embroidered along the train. The delicate fabric remained clean despite the pools ofblood she stepped over. “But unfortunately, I can’t say more. You see, I’m already breaking a lot of plates just to be here. It’s important to make sure they’re all the right ones.”

Skye’s chest felt too tight. He couldn’t breathe. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“That’s the point.” The words weren’t flippant. They were solemn, said with more sincerity than he had ever heard her use.

But something inside him still cracked.

“Don’t.” The word was clipped. Ragged.

Taly stopped, glancing back.

“Don’t do that,” he rasped. “Don’t toy with me. Not after I followed a fuckingdreamdown into these Shards-damned tunnels where I’ve spent the last three days covered in blood and rot and constantly looking over my shoulder.”

She turned to face him as he closed the space between them. “In the past two weeks,” he said, voice shaking as he stood over her, “my entire life has gone to shit. My home was attacked, and then you left me right after I got you back. And then after five days of worrying about you and trying to unite a group of people that I was in no way fit to lead, I steered those same people to their deaths.I got them trapped on a bridge with shades closing in from both sides because I didn’t anticipate that our enemy would use something as basic aswater magic.”

Taly was silent, her back too straight. This was usually the time she would’ve told him to stop feeling sorry for himself, but she didn’t. She just waited, listening with something like sadness in her eyes.

“We still have traitors in our midst,” he said, because now that he had started, he couldn’t stop. “And I’m pretty sure that’s because of me too. Because I couldn’t find them back in Ebondrift, and now they’re here in Ryme, using the same tactics and trying to bring us down from the inside. That’s why they killed those guards, and that’s why these tunnels are infested, and… I should’ve seen it sooner. Everything I do, it just feels like I’m never fast enough. Like I keep getting itwrong. I can’t remember the last time I actually felt like I knew what I was doing, and I’m starting to wonder…” He trailed off, reluctant to finish that sentence.

Reluctant to look up and see the pity in her eyes.

Skye took a deep breath, not caring that his eyes were wet. “And nowthis…” His voice cracked. “I know you aren’t really here. I know that I’m hallucinating and that you left, and I want to hate you for that…” Wiping at his eyes, he stumbled back. “I want to hate you so badly, Tink, because if I hated you, then I wouldn’t miss you. I wouldn’t feel like my heart was being ripped in two every time someone mentions your name, and I would stop asking myself what I could’ve done differently to make you stay. I’d stop trying to figure out where I messed up, and it wouldn’t feel like it was my fault that you’re not coming back.”

A pause, the silence heavy as the darkness that encroached in upon them.

“My fault,” he murmured, gripping his hair hard enough to hurt. “It’s my fucking fault, and I… I can’t do this.”

His back hit the tunnel wall, and he slid to the ground, sinking in on himself as he tried to find his grip on reality.

He could still feel her there.

Silent.

Staring.

He heard the click of her heels and the swish of her skirts. He didn’t look up when he sensed her kneeling beside him.

“Look at me,” she said.

But he shook his head. He didn’t want her pity. She was nothing but a ghost. An illusion. The thing his mind wanted most desperately to see.

Notreal.

“Look at me,” she said again, and though her voice was soft, the sheercommandin those three words—

He lifted his eyes.

Only to close them as she cupped his cheek.Warm. She was warm and solid, and even though his rational mind was screaming not to give in to the delusion, he gripped her hand, squeezing it like a lifeline.

“Youcando this,” she said, gentle but firm. So unlike the woman he knew and yet somehow the same. “There is a reason you are the light of Ghislain. There is a reason people follow you, and it’s not because of some title. It’s not because your blood is bluer than all the rest. It’s because you’reyou. No one else but Skylen Emrys, one of the few men I’ve ever known that deserves the power that came with his position. You’re intelligent, and courageous, and loyal. You protect the things that you care about, and you don’t give up. No matter how hard it gets.”

That faint hint of hope… it hurt. More than any blow.

He felt a tear slip free, and she caught it with her thumb.

“You’re not real,” he said, rejecting her words, that hope.