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I could stay here, in the emptiness, nothing to hurt me but pain itself. But a little piece of that darkness within—it makes mewant to fight. Fight for moments worth escaping, for pain worth feeling, for me. Whoever I am.

I’m worth the damn fight.

A tendril of energy works its way through me. It’s strangely familiar. I latch onto it, nurturing it, encouraging it, letting it belong exactly as it is. It grows and flows with a flourishing force, and the pain lessens.

The energy escalates. Faster, more vibrant. I force my eyes open. The source of the pain has me in its grasp, a woman’s pale arms crossing over me. I look down at the two bloody, broken men on the ground. I don’t know who they are, who I am. I reach for the energy, accepting it without knowing or caring, and let it become me.

The painful arms wrapped around me take on a white glow. I pull harder on that swelling energy, wrapping myself up in the flowing strands, and the pain goes away completely. My mind and body are mine again. Feeling returns. Cold air rushes against my wet clothes.

I slip from the arms and turn around. The woman falls back onto the ground, weak and trembling. Who is she? Crouching at her side, only terror occupies her black eyes.

Then, driven by something too deep within me to comprehend, I plant my hands on her creamy cheeks. Her entire body glows now, even her endless locks of hair. Her mouth is parted, her face lax, and I pull with the strength and steadiness of a deeply rooted tree from the beginning of time. I know I’m pulling something out of her and into me, but what or why—I don’t know. Just that I must.

Then my memories rain over me, flooding and filling my head—the pain, the death, the laughs. It’s all there.

I pull more and more from the woman on the ground, the rush building inside me, swirling madly, no hesitation or judgment. Then, I know her—my mother.

“Everielle,” she whispers weakly, a last attempt to tug at my broken heart, but it’s locked up tight and far beyond her reach.

I hold her unforgiving gaze, matching it and accepting every consequence that will come—the permanence of my actions, the end of my search for my mother—and I keep pulling. Like the plants, I pull the magic right out of her undeserving body, feeling as alive as I do after returning from a vision of death. She killed Eli and Kelter. Not with her hands, butshe’sresponsible.

She goes limp, a defeated mess of tangled hair and limbs. I keep the magic flowing from her into me until it runs dry and her glow fades. Then I rip the necklace from her neck and collapse. I refuse to let her steal magic from another baby ever again. The wind dies down, and the rain slows.

An anxious presence twines around me, and I open my eyes. Eli is sitting at my side, looking down at me, enough worry in those deep brown wells to last him a lifetime, or a few thousand.Wait. His neck. How is he here? I only imagined him holding me. Him and Kelt, they’re both gone.

But dead or alive, hallucination or miracle, Eli works his arms under my knees and around my shoulders, lifting me up and resting my spent body in his lap. I can barely move or think or feel. I can’t even hug him and cry over Kelter.

“Do you know who I am?” He swallows hard, a silent prayer on his lips, to the gods I don’t believe in.

“My favorite fucking mistake,” I whisper.

A smile takes over his face, a hand at his ear. “That mouth.” He holds me tighter with weak arms. “I won’t forget you chose that twerp over me.”

Thattwerpis my dead friend.

“I knew you wouldn’t die,” I lie, eyeing the blood everywhere, the red-and-black knife on the ground. How does broken immortality work?

“I don’t believe you.”

I shrug one shoulder against him.Please don’t ever let go.

“You were devastated,” he adds.His fingers poke through my sliced clothes and trace over the new cuts. “Which of them hurt you, Never?”

I snuggle into his chest. “Just hold me. Kill later.”Don’t make me relive it.

Every avoidant thought is ripped from my mind as Kelter crawls over to us and sits, one hand on his chest, another on his head. “What did you do to me, Eli?”

“Kelter—you’re alive.” As spent as I am, I try to get to him, but Eli doesn’t let go of me. He pulls me closer. My final sliver of strength fades as Kelter’s arms reach for me. His voice echoes as I fall unconscious.

“Hand her over, Eli. I’m here now.”

Chapter

Fifty-Nine

I’m sinking. The bed is too soft, the pillows too fluffy. But no nightmares followed me into sleep. The terrors and visions of the last few days must have been enough to satisfy the dark corners of my unconscious mind.

Gray light pours in through the sheer curtains hanging over two walls of floor-to-ceiling windows in Milo’s spare bedroom. Color skips through the rest of the room—sky blue walls, coral teardrop flowers in the corners, a saffron carpet, green ivy flirting with the walls and windows and a rainbow of glass vials covering every possible surface. I actually miss the gray stone walls of the castle.