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I didn't want to admit I hadn't even thought of wondering about that. ‘But I was the one who came up with the plan. I was the one who walked through those gates and ruined everything.’

He sighed. ‘So what?’

‘So I have to fix it.’ I let out a shrill laugh, the sound teetering on the edge of hysteria. ‘Or are you going to tell me I should just let these people die as well, like all of you were planning for any other place she might have attacked?’

I was lashing out – I knew I was, and yet I didn't seem able to stop. Perhaps I would feel better if he got angry with me forthisreason, if he refused to do it because of my deadly failures; perhaps he would turn his back on me and allow me to do whatever reckless things my heart was aching to do.

He did not get angry.

He did not turn his back on me.

‘Em.’ So dangerously calm. So treacherously gentle. ‘We both know you're not here to fix anything. You're here because you're trying to punish yourself again. You should know by now that I can tell the difference between those two things, even if you stubbornly insist on confusing them.’

I stared at him.

‘So is this really how you want to go about this?’ he continued, and the lethal little tilt of his head was all he needed to keep me rooted to the spot, unable to lift those feet that had been so eager to flee a minute ago. His gaze was like a dagger to the heart. ‘Doom us all to an inglorious defeat by throwing yourself into her hands, so you’ll feel like you’ve at least suffered appropriately for your crimes? Just because you’ve lived all your life believing that no mistake may exist without retribution and—’

My hand jerked itself forward – as if I could silence him by clenching my fingers over that merciless mouth. ‘Stop it!’

‘No,youstop it, Em.’ And there was the anger, finally – a tremor of something dark, a sudden sharpness to the words spilling violently from his lips. It didn't make me feel better. It felt much, much worse instead. ‘You can go around expectingflawless perfection of yourself, you can beat yourself up over every little misstep if you think it’ll make you happier, but I'm drawing the line here – you're not going to hand yourself over to her like some spineless coward because you’re still trying to please some phantom voice it’s not possible to please. You're not going to turn yourself into some useless martyr for them.’

Them.

A punch to the gut.

‘Or what?’ My voice soared, throwing those two words into his face with whip-like sharpness – all I could do to keep him away from those deepest parts of me, from something I'd rather protect with every last drop of my strength than take even a single look at. Anger was easy. Anger was safe. The feeling stirring just below the surface, a jagged, damaged thing that chafed and abraded … it was neither. ‘If Iwantto be a spineless coward, what are you going to do about it? Stop me?’

‘Oh, I'll fight you,’ he coolly informed me.

That shut me up for a moment.

He merely sent me another joyless smile – but there was no doubt in the gesture, no trace of jest. Six feet of scars and muscle, hardened and honed. Magic his body could barely contain, with all the black he needed at his fingertips. I may be unbound and godsworn, may wear the unwanted title of the Mother's foremost enemy … but I was standing there in nothing but a light blue dress, and that look in his eyes promised me he wouldn't hesitate to take advantage of my every weakness if he thought it necessary.

‘I might beat you,’ I said weakly, because I had to saysomething.

‘You might,’ he conceded, apparently unbothered by the possibility. ‘Or you might not. We never really tested it out, did we?’

‘And you …’ It was becoming harder and harder to find words, to keep speaking as my chest constricted dangerously.Fight you. I couldn't tell whether it was a promise or a threat. ‘You might hurt me.’

A shrug. ‘Not nearly as much as the Mother would.’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake – Creon,please.’ I struggled a single step away from him.Dying, dying, dying, sang that same phantom voice I didn't want to think about,and it's all because of you. ‘I'll think of something. I won't be stupid. I just need to—’

His hand closed around my forearm.

His other arm swept around my waist.

Like a child, I was lifted off my feet and dragged with my back against his chest – the Silent Death, stealing me once again. Constraining me.Dying, dying, dying, and they wouldn't stop dying either, would be left to their own devices as the Mother counted down the hours, until tomorrow's sun sank below the horizon and she gleefully, ruthlessly unleashed the horror of her magic upon the first blameless citizens …

Something broke within me.

I had allowed the reins to slacken once before, standing barefoot on the mother-of-pearl tiles of the Golden Court – had reached out to find my magic and found it willing to come to me from places I had never looked before. But there was no reaching out, this time. The power threw itself onto me instead, and all I did was lose control – all I did was fail to stop what I'd set free as the colours surged through me and roared out of me like a wild creature breaking free.

It was the black of his shirt, pressed against my upper arms.

It was the brown of my hair, curls brushing over my scalp.

It was the bronze of his fingers on my skin, the grey on the inside of my boots, every impossible little fleck of colour I should never have been able to draw, and I soaked them up like I was starving, unable to fend them off as my world turned red andmy mind turned red and everything I smelled and heard and felt turned red …