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“I’m still me. But I have needs too.” Her quiet voice is too much like the one that guided me through those early years, the one I so often hear in my head.

“What do you get for turning me in? Magic?” I can’t hide my disgust.

“The Centress will take care of you. She’ll give you all the escape you need. No more pain or visions. You’ll be happy.”

I scoff. “Does that make it easier for you?” I never dreamed of happiness. I’m not delusional—just unstable. “She’s lying. What do you get?”

“This isn’t easy for me.” Her grip slackens ever so slightly, softening with her voice.

“What’s she going to give you that’s worth my life?”

She’s quiet. Too quiet.

Then she laughs softly, a vibration against my thighs where she sits on me. “If anyone else in Sonnet found you, they’d hand you straight over. But I’m the one who cares enoughnotto turn you in. I’m the one she was worried about finding you.” She laughs again, harder this time. “So what does she do? She offers me something I can’t pass up. An out. If she has you, I don’t need to be responsible for ripping babies from their mothers anymore. She won’t need their magic. I get to walk away—all Ihave to do is give you back to your mother.” Her maniacal laugh travels down my neck.

I can’t appreciate the irony of it amid the pain. “Please, I’ll make sure you don’t have to do this anymore. Let me try.” I twist under her weight, a broken rib stabbing at my insides.

Cam’s tears splash onto my chest. “Know I love you, Everielle.”

She lets go with one hand to reach for her pocket, and I try to push her off me. She’s too fast. Something glints in her hand as she grabs my arm again and slams her weight down on me. My body convulses, rib breaking all over again. Pain anchors me to the ground. She slides her knees on top of each of my hands, pinning them at my sides. My knuckles crack under her grinding force despite the cushion of the grass.

Cam squishes my cheeks, forcing open my mouth, and holds a glass vial to my lips. With a sad grimace, she pours the liquid in. It splashes against my teeth in cold drops, coats my tongue with bitterness and puddles in the sides of my cheeks. I close my throat, refusing to swallow down the falseness. I don’t want to lose myself to the elixir—even if it comes with an escape. She pinches my nose, her long, square nails gouging into my face.

Her eyes go misty.I’m so sorry, she mouths, then rams her palm under my chin.

My teeth smash together, my tongue caught between. Blood fills my mouth—real blood—mixing with the elixir. The need to swallow climbs my spine, the need to breathe.

Right beneath her bony knees that hold me down, I rake my fingers against the dirt, forming squashed fists. Green spikes of grass poke between my knuckles. Breathless, racked with pain and a mouthful of swirling life and lies, the white energy returns with a vengeance. There’s no quiver, no gentle prodding or guiding. It explodes beneath the ground, magic travelingthrough a million tiny grass roots, jumping easily from one to the next.

The ground lurches. My lower half flies up into the air, ripping Cam’s fingers from my nose and throwing her away from me. Her legs slam beneath the edge of the carriage.

I sit up and spit the mix of elixir and blood into the grass.

“Everielle,” she cries. My fists contract.

Another explosion of energy—beautiful, raving, undeniable magic. I grip the grass blades tighter. The ground jerks and rolls again at the surge from below, and Cam slides further under the carriage.

And right over the waterfall’s edge.

“Cam!”

She answers with an ever-quieting scream.

My whole body trembles, and the earth below me jolts again.

The carriage rolls after her. I push past the agony in my rib and scurry to the edge. Taking hold of the carriage, wrapping my murderous hands around that old, splintery wood, I pull with everything in me. A strength that can only be gained from surviving ten thousand deaths.

But even that strength—conjured from years of visions and drawn from the deepest pockets of pain—has no effect, no special power. I’m no one special. The weight of the carriage wins. The heavy sacks of freewill-killing elixir, the five remaining babies, my self-worth—they tip over the edge into the mist.

Gone forever.

Chapter

Forty-Two

Loneliness hurts more than death.

Staying behind, living—that’s what kills me.