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“Are you worried?” I prodded.

“I wasn’t until today, because I thought I had a handle on it, even if I couldn’t understand why it happened. But now”—she sat straighter—“I’m curious. I want to find answers.”

It wasn’t nerves in her voice—it was anticipation. An eager swirl through her stomach that straightened her spine and caused her to squirm.

“We’ll find answers for you, Jez. I promise.”

She beamed.

“In the meantime, though?—”

“No,” she snapped. “I don’t know what you’re about to say, but you have your protective sister expression on your face. So, no.”

“Jezzie.” I sighed. Selfishly, reluctance almost stole my words, because what I was going to say was the last thing I wanted. “I don’t know if you should go to the war front. There are so many people dying there, and that would be so traumatic for you. When we head there next, maybe it will be better for you if you don’t come. I don’t want you to have to live through it again.”

Having to hear their final thoughts, the regrets and last hopes. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

She considered for a moment, and again her hand went to where her necklace should be. “I don’t know where else I’d go.”

My heart crumbled. For a moment, nothing else mattered. Not the alpheous or the emblems, not my own curse or scar. Nothing but the defeated look in my sister’s eyes admitting she didn’t know where her place was in the world.

This girl who had always been strong, who carried more burdens than the rest of us ever guessed, who had said she knew her destiny would carry her somewhere grand, was confessing she was lost.

I pulled her to me. “Everything is going to be okay.” I tried to believe it, but as I rubbed a hand down my sister’s hair, my scar caught my eye, and I hoped I hadn’t just lied.

We sat like that for a few minutes, sinking into the comfort of secrets spilled between us, until finally Jezebel pushed back. There was a teasing gleam to her eye I knew I wouldn’t like. “Now can I ask you about Tolek?”

“What about Tolek?” I rolled my eyes, but I’d known she wouldn’t let the conversation from the plains rest.

“I realized I hadn’t asked before. Are you happy?”

It was greedy after everything she’d said, but I couldn’t fight the smile splitting my lips. “I am.”

And she beamed back at me.

Wings fluttered through my chest at only the thought of him. And because Jez had shared so much, I offered a piece of what I hadn’t admitted to anyone. “I’m so scared I’m going to mess it up, though.”

“Mess it up?”

I sighed, getting up on the pretense of pouring her another glass of wine, but truly needing to avoid looking at her.

“When I think of being happy with Tolek, it feels too good to be true. As if it will crash to earth like a fallen Angel if I’m not careful.” As most good things had. “I screwed things up spectacularly with my last attempt at love.”

Broken goodbyes and a whispered until the stars stop shining echoed in my mind from the last time Malakai and I had been together. I clenched my hand around Jez’s glass, turning to give it back before I could shatter the thing. Spirits, it was warm in here. I moved closer to the window to gulp down the briny sea air.

It wasn’t missing Malakai that caused that pain; it was the fear of my bad patterns repeating themselves. I wanted Tolek more than I wanted air to breathe, but not at the cost of hurting him.

“That wasn’t your fault, sister. It wasn’t his either. It just…was. Is. That’s how things happen sometimes.”

“I know you’re right, but I was at fault for some things.”

“We all are. You and Tolek, though, it’s different.”

“How so?” I curled up on my bed, pulling a throw blanket around my shoulders and toying with the loose strings. The sounds of waves echoed off the coast in the distance.

“The change in you—It’s like the sun shining after a storm. Like the first buds of spring pushing through the frozen ground. Tolek brings out those pieces of you.”

Tolek made me want to be a better person, to live.