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“Asshole,” I replied.

He arched a brow.

“…It occurs to me, now, that I never really came up with a fitting nickname for you,” I said.

“Most just call meAleksfor short.”

“I can do better than that, I think. Just give me time.”

“Right.” He turned his attention back to Thalia and Kaelen. “Happy creating, then.”

I smiled a bit at his dry tone before settling into the shadows beside him. Closer than I wanted to be, but it was a necessary evil to stay out of sight of the pair we were spying on.

I did my best to ignore him. To not breathe in his crisp, earthy scent too deeply. To avoid getting too caught up in the changing rhythms of his heartbeat.

And yet, my magic shifted with the awareness of him and his power, shadows moving over my skin despite my best efforts to control them; I soon gave up trying to stop those shadowsand simply allowed a few tendrils to break the surface and swirl around us, further cloaking us in darkness.

We could hear occasional bits of the conversation in the garden below, but it didn’t matter—they weren’t speaking any language either of us knew. I watched carefully, all the same, trying to interpret what I could from their expressions and body language.

They both proved difficult to read in this way, too. I got the impression this was not the first time the two of them had sparred with one another, and that each one was trying to outdo the other when it came to not giving any outward sign of distress—or any emotion at all, for that matter.

Finally, their argument seemed to reach a climax; Thalia whipped a knife from somewhere, its blade gleaming in the light of the blue-flame lanterns dotted throughout the garden. Her movements were still perfectly precise, cold and controlled. She pointed the blade at the throat of Kaelen—who didn’t move—and said something in a low hiss of a voice before turning on her heel and storming away.

I leaned closer to the balcony railing, watching the Erebosian leader for any emotion he might betray now that Thalia wasn’t there to see it.

He started to glance upward at the exact moment Aleksander wrapped an arm around my waist and smoothly, silently pulled me out of sight.

I again did my best to ignore his closeness, calmly pushing away from his touch—but keeping well within the shelter of shadows—before glancing toward the garden and asking, “What do you think that was about?”

“No idea.” He frowned. “But the sooner we get out of this city, the better, I believe.”

“We agree on something, for once.”

“It’s a day of miracles, clearly,” he said, heading back inside.

I fell into step beside him, slowly gathering my courage enough to say: “Speaking of miracles…”

“…The incident at the lake?”

I nodded.

He sighed. “We should discuss that, I suppose.”

We made our way over to a corner of the room, into a space that felt less open and exposed, and that was far out of view of the nearest doors and windows. Aleksander reclined against the wall while I perched on the armrest of a chair, but didn’t truly sit in it; I was far too anxious to relax into its weathered cushions.

Neither of us seemed to know where to start.

He held his hand in front of him, tracing his magic as it faintly lit up the lines of his palm, before he finally said, “That girl, and the area that came to life around her…I’ve never seen magic like that before.”

“Me neither.”

“Granted, I don’t know much about your type of magic, aside from what I was taught by my tutors.”

“Teachings that were almost certainly biased.”

He didn’t comment on this—but he didn’t disagree, either. “But regarding my own magic,” he went on, “I’ve brought things to life before, but those things typically only live so long as I continue to feed them with my power; they never take root the way they did near that lake. I cut off my magic entirely back there, yet everything continued to flourish.”

“…And something tells me if we went back to it now, it wouldstillbe flourishing,” I said. “It seems impossible. I’ve managed to loosen death’s hold on things in the past, but that effect never lasts, either. Phantom is the closest I’ve come to reviving something, and it certainly wasn’t as permanent a spell as what we seem to have done with that girl. He was the only instance where I’ve managed such a thing, too, and I still don’t know how I pulled it off, aside from desperation.”