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“ Y ou’re going back to the wishing well?” Fable demanded. “Are you out of your frucking mind?”

Part of me had wondered the same thing when Phyllis suggested it, but the more we’d talked, the more I knew she was right. There truly was no other way ...

Explaining that to my housemates was a whole other ball of wax though.

“Calypso already tried to kill you once. And this is a good idea, why?” Ellie’s eyes filled with concern.

“We could fight her instead. Do you need me to go fight her?” Gary asked, flexing his muscles.

“No fighting. I just have to hope that if I make her an offer she can’t refuse, she’ll make the deal. And I’m going to take back up. I’m going to ask Liam to come with me, as Phyllis suggested.”

In case I couldn’t convince Calypso to make a deal, Liam would – hopefully – be able to pull me out.

Phyllis and I had come up with a doozy of an offer. Everything in my being told me so, and even considering my Quirk and all I’d learned here at Neverthorn this time around, my gut was still my greatest strength.

But even a victory here would surely ring hollow.

Leaving Neverthorn was going to be the most painful sacrifice I’d ever been asked to make.

I’d already broken the news to Bandit and had given him a letter for Opie.

If I saw her face to face and had to explain what was about to happen, it’d break my resolve.

Even seeing Bandit’s big, sad eyes had been bad enough.

“I don’t love it,” Fable said with a sniff. “But I get it.”

I’d already explained everything to them.

Why we had to go, what was at stake if we stayed and let them separate us.

Everything except Nocta being my father.

Fable already knew of course, but I needed everyone to be fully committed and given all that he had done to cause harm over the years, it definitely wouldn’t help my case.

As much as I hated keeping secrets from them after all we’d been through, this was the only way for us to get strong enough to protect ourselves and the rest of the students at Neverthorn.

I’d do what needed to be done and beg their forgiveness later. Assuming we all made it out of this mess alive.

By the time their interrogation was over, and everyone was on board, it was nighttime, and I was mentally drained. And there was still one more thing I had to do before I left the building.

My eyes flitted this way and that as I made my way down the hall.

To Typhon’s door.

I rapped on the door and called his name in a low voice. “Typhon?” Silence reigned, and I knocked again, harder. Hard enough to make my knuckles sting. “Typhon, it’s Harlow. Open the door.”

Again, silence.

I reached for the door handle and tried to turn it, but it was locked. I jiggled and banged on the door with the heel of my palm. “Typhon, if you don’t open this door, I’m gonna open it myself.”

“Tarquinius is misguided.” His voice was gruff, as he spoke through the door, like he’d swallowed glass. “I’m going to the Senate before morning light and won’t leave until they’ve agreed to intervene. But I need you to go. We’ll talk about it tomorrow when I get back.”

Knowing he was ready to stand up to Tarquinius and fight for me only made the stab of guilt for what I was about to do even sharper.

But if I told him we were all leaving tonight, he might feel he had no choice but to try and stop me.

And if by some miracle he trusted Liam enough to protect us and did let us go, he would no longer have plausible deniability.

If he didn’t know we were leaving, he couldn’t be blamed for not stopping us.

There was no other way.

“Typhon . . .”

“Go, damn you!”

It was like he didn’t know me at all. I whipped off a quick rune, and the door handle gave way. I pushed my way inside, blinking as my eyes attempted to adjust to the darkness.

“Get out!” a voice snarled from the corner of the room.

He sounded like a monster.

I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.

As I padded across the room, his form slowly began to take shape by the moonlight filtered in through the shutters covering the window.

He stood in front of a roughly hewn wooden desk.

I realized with a start that he was shirtless, his hair was almost as wild as his eyes, and blood was running in a stream from the crook of his arm, down his hands and into a plain, iron chalice.

What the –

“Typhon, please talk to me. I can’t leave you here like this. I don’t know what’s wrong, and until I do, I’m going to be worried sick. Please –”

His laugh was harsh and humorless. “I knew it was a mistake to have you come back. You just don’t know when to fucking quit, do you? And I don’t know who it’s going to kill first, Harlow: you or me.”

I rushed closer and grabbed his arm, peering down at the wound there. The gash was deep, and the blood was flowing heavily.

“Gods, what happened?”

He yanked away as I registered just how hot his flesh was.

“Typhon –” I broke off as my gaze lowered to the desk to see a large blade lying next to the chalice. It was wet with fresh blood.

Typhon’s blood.

I swayed on my feet, suddenly dizzy. “Did you – did you do this to yourself?” I demanded, grabbing him by his shoulder and yanking him to face me. The answer was in his eyes, along with a slew of other emotions that I couldn’t even begin to decipher. “Gods, Typhon, why?”

There was a white cloth on the desk as well, and I picked it up and moved to staunch his wound, wrapping it as tightly as I could. He didn’t fight me, and for that I was grateful. It was only when I got my own feet under me that I realized he was swaying too.

“Sit before you fall down,” I said gently, pulling him toward the edge of the bed.

I lowered myself to the mattress, and he followed suit. He leaned in heavily, and with a broken sigh that made it seem like all the energy had been drained out of him in one fell swoop.

“Don’t bother asking. This isn’t something I will speak of. Not now, not ever.”

“Because you’re rune gagged?”

He stared at me long and hard and then shook his head. “Because I choose not to tell you.”

“Okay, but a few weeks ago, when Lucy was wandering the halls and you came out covered in blood, was it this too? And that night on the roof with Nikita?”

His non-response was answer enough.

“Save your pity. Whatever my struggles, they’re less than I deserve, I promise you that.”

“Someone recently told me that the people I trust do not deserve it,” I admitted softly as I moved closer. “And I instantly thought of you. But I know you aren’t as bad as you pretend to be. In fact, I think you’re the only person with any power here that isn’t a monster.”

His jaw went so tight it could’ve cut glass, and I resisted the urge to trace my finger over the pulse pounding in his neck. Then he let out a harsh laugh, but it sounded forced.

“How quickly we forget.” He reached out to splay his big palm over my heart, which thudded hard in reply. “I nearly killed you once, Harlow. What makes you think I’ve changed?”

I stared at him long and hard as the blood rushed in my ears. “Maybe you haven’t. But maybe you weren’t a monster then either. Tell me the truth, Typhon. Did you want to hurt me that day?”

The words hung between us for so long, I almost asked the question again, but then he broke the silence.

“I fired a killing rune straight at your chest, Harlow. You do the math.”

But the longer I stared at him, the surer I became. And the truth rocked me to my core.

Holy sheet.

“It was an accident, wasn’t it?” I demanded, thinking back to that day. Thinking of how furious I was that he’d lorded his power over a kid who was so much weaker than him. Alvin Prisby. “Why did you have him in that stranglehold? The truth, Typhon.”

He winced and shook his head. “That kid was a prick. He’d tried to create a potion that would make a girl he liked more agreeable to his advances. He put it in her drink at dinner. I was dealing with him when you walked in.”

My stomach did a nosedive even as the pain in my ribs throbbed.

“And I intervened. Knocked you off him with some half-baked rune,” I continued, pressing.

I could still see the expression on his face when he’d lifted a finger to send off the first rune.

Pure shock. And then panic as I continued to fire my sloppy magic at him .

.. “Something I did startled you. Sent you reeling and confused you enough that you made a terrible mistake.”

“Stop.”

I shook my head furiously. “You can keep lying if you want to Typhon, but I can feel it in my bones. You didn’t mean to do it.”

“You just can’t accept that you were annoying enough that I did it on purpose.” But again, the words rang hollow and when he tried to move his hand away, I grabbed it and held it tight to my chest.

“I forgive you.”

“I don’t forgive me!”

His face was tight with remembered pain, his eyes full of regret even as he shook his head.

“Please, just let it go, Harlow.”

“I forgive you, Typhon,” I said again, hoping he could hear the truth ringing in my voice.

“I don’t deserve your forgiveness.” He was shaking his head furiously now, but I found myself leaning into him anyway, until I could feel the heat rolling off him.

“Typhon ... please let me help you.”

“Gods damn it. You don’t know what you’re asking for. Last chance, Harlow,” he muttered, a growl reverberating deep in his throat. “Go while you still can.”

He was right. This was a terrible idea. I should do what I came to do, and walk away ...

“No.”

The second the word left my mouth, I was on him, closing the distance between us, my lips slanted over his. And, as if he’d never considered otherwise, he wrapped one hand in my hair, his wound forgotten.

Stars exploded behind my eyelids as his tongue danced with mine. He was everything dark and delicious, but there was an edge of desperation ... of a shared suffering that made it painfully beautiful.

I wrapped my arms around his broad shoulders, and he slanted his body over mine, pressing me against the mattress with a groan so guttural that it could’ve been pleasure or pain. Maybe both.

He tore his mouth from mine, peppering my jaw with kisses before nipping me sharply.

“Gods, I dream about this every night.”

Heat flared in my stomach as I gripped him tighter and rolled my hips against his. He was a massive wall of a man, and that didn’t stop at the waist. In fact, he was so thick and hard against my belly, it felt like a length of steel.

More.

This wasn’t part of the plan, damn it, but what if I never had the chance again? What if I left Neverthorn a second time, and we never found our way back to one another?

I reached between us to yank my shirt open. Buttons flew, pinging off the floor, as he made short work of my bra.

I closed my eyes as the cool night air hit my overheated, bare skin.

“If this was the last sight I ever saw, I could die a happy man.”

I let my lashes flutter open and found him staring down at me, one knee on either side of my hips, naked hunger on his face.

“You are so fucking beautiful. You don’t deserve –”

He let out a groan as he rolled away, springing to his feet like a tiger, looking every bit as dangerous as he stared down at me, eyes still wild with need.

I sat up, tugging my shirt to cover myself. “Typhon –”

“It can’t happen. I shouldn’t have even let it get this far. There’s too much you don’t know. Go!” he snarled. “Before I do something we both regret.”

I scooted to the end of the bed to stand in front of him, then laid a gentle hand on his cheek. For a second, it felt like he leaned into my touch before grabbing my wrist roughly and yanking it away.

“Goodnight, Harlow.”

I yanked my arm away, tears stinging my eyes as I pushed my way blindly into the hall before letting the door close behind me.

“Goodbye, Typhon,” I murmured under my breath, heart aching like it had been torn in two.

Hopefully, Typhon would fall into a deep, exhausted sleep after whatever he’d been through tonight, and by the time he figured it out, it’d be too late. But just in case ...

I drew in a breath and crafted a blocking rune in front of his door. Then I breathed as much power into it as I could, letting the magic expand and fill me before filling the rune to bursting. Steeling myself, I pushed away from the door and rushed down the hallway.

I’d bought myself a twenty-minute head start. Maybe a little more if he didn’t discover the rune right away.

Another wave of guilt rolled over me, but it was just one more piece of kindling to add to the fire. I couldn’t let it sway me from what I knew was right.

No matter how much it was killing me.