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“You hardly know the girl,” Dorian’s voice was a snarl. “Besides, another body will just slow us down. There’s only one resurrection card, and we’re counting on it for Davenant. My mother will deal with me.” There was a bitterness in his tone, then.

“Ever the hero,” Hugo spat. Despite the death that awaited me, I couldn’t help but feel the warmth of a smile spreading across my cheeks. Hugo wanted to come with us, for me.

“They’ll trace the residue,” Dorian continued. “My signature’s all over them. I have to go.” Feet shuffled overhead, and a moment later, something slammed hard against the wall, shifting the bricks to rubble. It was obvious that Hugo wasn’t used to being told ‘no.’

Hugo’s hands softened around Dorian’s neck as he spotted me.

He crossed the tower in two strides. His hands raked through my hair with concern, tucking a strand behind my ear.

“You can’t do this alone.” His tone was firm, his back to the ledge and the steep drop-off below, blocking me from the gap in the railing.

This was sweet. This was also… weird. Hugo and I didn’t know each other that well.

“I’m not alone,” I smiled weakly. Dorian wasn’t my first choice for company, but his resurrection was a guarantee.

“Right,” Dorian said, already moving on. “I’ve called you to the clock tower because my mother is practiced in this sort of resurrection. I borrowed sage from Esmerelda’s stores so the ghosts have dispersed, temporarily . We don’t have long.”

“Understood.” Hugo nodded.

“Stop.” I grabbed Hugo’s arm, my nails digging into his sleeve, aware of how close he was to the gap in the railing we had fallen through only a few nights ago. “You cannot come. There is only one resurrection card.”

“I don’t care.”

“Hugo, you will die.”

There was a bittersweet softness to his words. “So will you.”

“Hugo—” My voice barely left my throat before he stepped back, teetering near the edge. He was still smiling, too calm and too certain. The glow of the moon bathed his golden skin in a spectral light, shadows carving hollows beneath his cheekbones.

My mind could not process what was happening. I turned to Dorian, panicked. “Do something!” I shouted.

Dorian smirked, like it was all a joke to him. I lunged for Hugo, and my fingers clawed into his wrist. I drove my heels in but I was not strong enough to hold him. No. No, no, no.

“Don’t,” I choked. “You don’t have to do this.”

His other hand curled around mine, peeling my fingers loose gently.

His eyes were glistening, his throat bobbed as though straining against his own impulse.

“I have to do this,” he whispered, the words raw.

“From the moment I saw you, something inside me shifted. I don’t know why, but if I let you fall alone, it feels like the world itself snaps in half. ”

A pulse of silver light flickered over his sternum, so faint I thought I’d imagined it, threading toward me like a silk cord before vanishing. My own pendant throbbed in answer.

He was already shifting his weight, already letting go. My nails dug into his skin again, useless, helpless, because he had already made his choice. I clawed trying to throw my weight back to pull him toward me instead of the abyss behind him.

“Please!” My voice broke. “You don’t have to do this.” We hardly know each other. We’re nothing more than strangers.

“I’ll see you again. After .” His fingers traced over my knuckles, then, he pushed backward. It wasn’t violent, wasn’t desperate. He dropped easily, the fabric of his uniform rippling in the crepuscular light, until the darkness swallowed him.

The air collapsed inward, a gust spiraling against my skin as the space where he had stood vanished into nothing. The weight of him was gone, and the silence that followed was deafening. I stumbled forward, my fingers still curled around air. A strangled noise wrenched from my throat. No.

There had to be something left. A trace of him. A way to undo this. I dropped to my knees at the clock tower’s edge, but there was nothing. Just the shifting dark, just the gaping void where he had been.

My body wouldn’t stop shaking. Not from cold, but from adrenaline, as if Hugo had taken some last thread of certainty with him. I didn’t understand it. We weren’t close. I barely knew him. And yet he’d jumped off the clocktower for me. Voluntarily. Was this what Evermore did to people?

I pressed my palm to my chest, feeling the thunder of my pulse, feeling the space where he had stood, feeling… nothing, but everything.

Teetering, the wind whipped past my ears, and the dark void below called out to me. The question screamed in my skull. Why would a boy I barely knew throw himself into the void for me? But grief smothered it before it could flower.

I suppose I had always known the journey would end here. The moment I got that phone call, the one that changed everything, it had already begun. The slow, inexorable march toward this ledge, toward this moment. It had felt like dying then, and it felt like dying now.

I flicked a glance at Dorian. Empathy did not grace his features, just irritation. “What a fucking inconvenience this will be.”

“An inconvenience?” The words came out shrill. Dorian’s felt like they had smacked me across the face. The entitlement. The arrogance.

Dorian didn’t meet my eyes. He just muttered, “One resurrection card. One.” His voice was flat, like didn’t consider Hugo’s death tragic, just annoying.

My foot hovered over the edge. I swayed, uncertain. I looked back at him. Could I really do this? What if I didn’t come back? What if I couldn’t?

“You first, Davenant.” Dorian muttered, quiet and bitter. His gaze held mine. “I’ll be right behind you.”

I glanced at him, wind whipping past my ears. My stomach curdled, palms slicked with sweat. The Thread slithered around my throat, its voice curling in my ear. “ Don’t do this.”

I felt a tug as it tried to pull me back from the edge, but the swell of my adrenaline was drowning it out. This mess was my fault. I couldn’t leave Hugo and Dorian to fix it for me.

I peered down, the ground swallowed by darkness, and despite every instinct that told me not to—I jumped.