Page 17

“When Alrick ordered Death to tear himself in two, it wasn’t a punishment. The god king wished for the oldest amongst them to have a companion who suited him.” – Esther Weil, Renowned Folklorist

I survived another week.

It was a blessing that Asher’s poems made me feel like I could win a footrace, because the sixth trial was all about speed. The Schatten delivered us to the platform. Salty air filled my nose. Sea water battered the thin strip of isthmus, and hundreds of hungry yellow eyes lined the shores, waiting for the clock tower to chime and the gates to part.

All I carried on my person was my weapons and my water sack. The rest of my coven was outfitted similarly. I checked my revolver, sliding open the cylinder. Only three rounds left . . .

The number of prisoners on the platform had dropped by half in the last week. The efforts of the red hoods and the Guardians to recruit from them had been very effective. New prisoners were dropped into the Schatten every day, and still numbers were down.

The clock chimed. The gates parted. The race commenced.

We sprinted for our lives, Nola at the front with her Crone blade and me at the rear, ready to put a gray bullet in the face of any water devil who threatened my coven.

The devils were hungry today, and the pickings were slim. We got caught in a crowd of them right at the start. I had to put down two devils with the revolver before we’d even cleared the gates. Nola was a force of nature, though, swinging that bone dagger in a deadly arc that felled two more. And we were off again.

One bullet left.

My boots filled with sand, adding weight to every step. Halfway down the isthmus, Nola pulled too far ahead of the group. Three water devils circled her. Ruchel shouted out a warning.

I fired my last bullet, dropping the garm at her back. Talia’s coven sprinted ahead of us, and the garm eyed them from the cusp of the shore but didn’t leave the water. They waited until we were near before springing.

Blue flourished her forked wand and cast up a swell of sea water, sweeping away the next attack.

“Are they after us?” Ruchel hissed, too breathless to shout.

It certainly felt that way. We made it off the sand and into the forested park. We were deep in the trees before the devils halted their pursuit. They’d never come so far before. We stopped to catch our breath at the brackish pool we loved to fish in, our little patch of paradise. We took turns bathing under the waterfall, watching for more garm, but none came.

They’d finally had enough of us.

“Maybe it just felt like we were being targeted,” Nola offered, running her fingers through her short damp hair, shaking the water out of it.

“There’s so few of us now,” Blue said, drying her face on the terrycloth we’d left hanging in the citrus trees for our return. “It doesn’t make sense that they’d pass up the chance at a meal just to pick on us.”

“If it even is possible,” Nola asked, “who could make garm behave that way? Unger?”

“Unger fashioned the devils,” Blue offered, “but he shows about as much interest in them now as he does the giants. The sea god has no stakes in the games that I’m aware of. I haven’t seen him once in the throne room of Wulfram since I was sentenced here years ago.”

“He’s neglectful, you mean,” Nola prodded, “like all the gods are.”

Blue rolled her eyes but made no comment.

“A god-born mind warlock could make the garm behave that way,” I muttered. I pressed my face into the terrycloth and breathed in the tart scent balmy air and citrus had left behind.

“You’re all paranoid,” Ruchel said, joining us under the tree. Then she sighed. “But so am I.”

I helped the sisters repack their soaps, wrapping them in brown paper. We hid most of them under stones that we kept near the trunk of the citrus trees. Blue used her sway with the water to catch fish easily.

Nola stuffed the mouths of the peacock bass with sliced citrus, and Emma roasted them on a spit over a fire lit with red magic. I helped Ruchel hunt for wild greens and pick tomatoes from a vine that grew farther down the basin. We gathered colorful mushrooms—another god experiment abandoned here—and made a salad topped in sliced tomatoes, shredded edible roots, and oil we squeezed from the vibrant fungi.

I ate roasted fish and salad until my gut was heavy and happy and my hair had dried.

“Hide,” Ruchel shouted, and paradise was over. The trial had begun again.

We were no strangers to the massive blind beast that haunted the park. Some trials, we never came across him at all. Others, he lumbered by, and we were able to sneak around him. But the beast was in a mood today.

He threw his weight about, crashing into trees. We broke into our groups of three. The sisters followed closely at my back. We headed in the direction of the black lake before cutting down a path that would take us out of the park. I didn’t have a bullet left, but I’d use my gray to keep us alive if it came to that. I’d deal with the ramifications and explanations later. The others had separated from us to take the opposite path. We’d meet on the train later.

The sisters and I went to ground when the garm came too close, hiding in the brush, and I saw him clearly for the first time as I peered between the saplings and the knotted overgrowth, my breath trapped in my lungs so he wouldn’t hear every panicked puff.

The creature was as big as the giants who dominated the desert, and resembled a bear covered in black fur. His hands were eerily human, with long dark claws. The reddish mane of a lion circled his neck. His ears were furry and pointed like a bat’s, and tall bracketed horns sprouted from the dome of his shaggy head.

The shredded remains of a red hood and a black uniform dangled from his broad mouth, both dripping blood, and I understood now what had enraged him. The beast had been caught in a skirmish between the covens.

Someone had put out the creature’s eyes. Puckered scar tissue had healed poorly over what remained of his lids. A spear had been shoved into his side, his flesh and fur long grown over it. He huffed out a breath that lit the air with the scent of sulfur, and he charged on all fours, in a rage.

An oak tree came smashing down, narrowly missing me. Its branches scraped my side and scratched my face, and I threw myself out of the way of crashing limbs.

Emma let out a whimper that pierced my heart, a pitiful sound that caught in my chest like a thrown dart.

Was she all right? The fall had knocked the air out of me, and there were branches everywhere. I couldn’t find her and was afraid to call out. We didn’t need the creature coming after us next.

I shoved limbs aside and found her standing and whole, thank the Crone.

“Emma?” I whispered.

Where was Liesel?

I reached for Emma, but she shoved me off.

Then I saw her sister at our feet, the pale, slender arm sticking out from the heavy trunk, the only part of poor Liesel not crushed beneath it.

No, no, no, no, no. She couldn’t be gone. Not like that, not so quickly. My stomach plummeted.

Emma let out a choking sob.

I leapt to her side and grabbed her up in my arms. “Don’t make a sound,” I begged, covering her mouth with my hand.

Jaw slack, Emma stared down at the ashen hand, blues eyes welling, that limp arm, still reaching for her sister in her final moments. Emma pushed me off, then threw her body against the trunk, grunting with the effort of trying to move it.

It didn’t budge.

There was no chance Liesel had survived that, but when I tried to draw Emma away, she took a swing at me. I helped her instead, shoving with all my might at the great fallen tree. The beast wreaked havoc in the distance, felling more forest, sending smaller garm fleeing, taking his rage out on all that happened into his path.

Tears welled in my eyes, spilling over as we pushed and shoved. I lowered my shoulder and heaved with everything I had.

Emma pulled her sigil out of her satchel, the one of the bear etched into a block of pale ash wood. She squeezed it in her palm, and the wood bent to her will. It glittered green. The magic released.

Her eyes, red-rimmed, went vibrant as emeralds. She used the strength of a bear and her connection to the earth to roll the trunk off Liesel.

Was this really happening? My mind was a sluggish thing, refusing to catch up with the rest of me.

Liesel couldn’t truly be gone.

Lisbeth couldn’t really be gone.

Emma fell to her knees and wept.

I stood over her, powerless to help, crying my own useless tears for my sister. It might as well have been Lisbeth’s broken body clutched in her arms, limp and lifeless.

The beast was circling back.

“We have to go,” I told her. “I’ll help you carry her.”

“No,” Emma said. She set her sister down and kissed her forehead, tears dripping off her chin.

“We can’t stay,” I whispered. The beast was closing in now.

“You go,” she said, voice hollow, eyes blank.

I didn’t go. I didn’t move. She rose to her feet, found a long limb she liked, and broke it off from the oak tree that had claimed her sister. With her connection to the earth, she fashioned it into a sharp spear as tall as she was, the wood glittering green and bending to her spell.

Fueled by the sorrow I saw mirrored in Emma, fueled by the loss of my coven sister and the grief trying to burn a hole through my chest, my spirit boiled within me. I called it to my hands, let it turn them gray, let little tendrils of spirit seep from my fingertips in foggy wisps.

We would be the beast’s retribution together. Emma looked ready to murder the world.

When the creature came charging, we didn’t back down. A surge of gray took the brunt of his strike, knocking the beast off his path, sending him sideways into a collection of spruce trees. Emma kept on him, stabbing at his belly, swinging for the bear-like face with her unnatural strength.

He reared up onto his hind legs. I leapt for the beast, reaching into his knee joint. He was so tall standing, his knee was as high as I could get. I tore at tendon and tissue. He roared and fell, landing with a crash that shook the earth and sent me sprawling onto the forest floor. I cut my palm open on a rock and sliced my brow against a branch. Pain, sharp and stinging, left me hissing for breath.

I surged back to my feet, battered and shaken, looking for my next opening.

Emma stabbed the beast in his snout. He swiped at her with his devastating claws, tearing into her front, but Emma kept standing. I dove toward the beast’s belly and shoved my hands inside.

Her next strike went straight through the creature’s blind eye. The beast fell silent. He thrashed once and died, his spirit gone from his body before I could grab hold of it. Emma collapsed. A scream ripped from my throat, one sure to bring the forest full of garm after us.

I climbed over the creature’s carcass and found Emma in a heap on the ground. Her eyes were open and wild, her torn clothing soaked through with her own blood.

“Take me to her,” she begged.

“I shouldn’t move you,” I said. I didn’t know where to begin to help her, pressing my palms high on her chest and low on her belly where the bleeding seemed worse, but more crimson rivulets dripped from her clothing.

She coughed her life force into my face, her complexion turning pallid. Her teeth were pink with blood. “Take me to Liesel,” she rasped.

I lifted her under her arms and dragged her to her sister. Liesel wasn’t far. I placed her sister’s hand in hers.

“I got him,” Emma told her. I got him , she mouthed the words. And then her head tipped back and her mouth fell open. The light left her eyes.

I knew not what to do for them. Eyes burning and blurry, I gathered stones and heavy limbs and covered them as best I could. It was fortunate no garm came to disturb me after that. I would have ripped their soul out of their chest and eaten it, evil or not. In that moment, I was ready to be wicked.

I wanted to burn down the Otherworld and everyone in it.

But I was alone here.

Just as quickly as the thought came to me, my strength left me and I sagged. “I’m so sorry, Emma . . .”

I never should have made a promise to her. A part of me had always known it was empty words.

My knees threatened to buckle as I carried myself through the trees, back toward the black lake. By the time I reached its rocky shore, Emma’s blood had dried under my nails and between the cracks of my palms.

I was tired to the bone. The sort of tired that pierced the soul and sapped me of spirit.

I dropped to my knees by the water’s edge. Burying my arms up to the elbows, I washed Emma’s blood away. Crimson rivulets swirled in the water, sure to summon a hungry water devil to me soon.

Every inch of me ached, and no muscle was more sore than my battered heart. I sprawled on my back, ignoring the rocks that dug into my spine.

I just needed a moment. Needed to breathe and stare at the clouds overhead and think of nothing that could hurt me. I lacked the energy to summon my mental mortar and pestle.

Swooshing in the water drew my eyes to the lake, and I let out a curse. A small whirlpool sent bubbles cascading toward the surface. I pulled myself upright, readying to face another devil.

If a garm tried to eat me, I was ready to eat it first. What did it matter? I was already a villain. I might as well act like one.

But the creature that burst forth from the dark water was no simple devil.

A great water serpent leapt into the air, rising up on its long neck. Its face resembled that of a dragon with blue armored scales, and a crown of horns jutted from its wide head. Its body kept coming, kept rising up and up out of the water until I thought it might touch the sky and keep going. Then it stopped and lowered its reptilian chin. A forked tongue licked at the air. Big yellow eyes sharpened on me.

“Damn it all,” I whispered, arms and legs frozen in fright.

A low hiss was my final warning that it was about to strike. Its mouth dropped open, revealing fangs bigger than spears. It hurtled toward me, and I knew in my bones these moments would be my last. I covered my face with my arms, waiting for the inevitable strike I didn’t have the energy or the might to defend against.

I couldn’t save anyone. Not even myself.

And then . . . nothing. Somehow, I wasn’t dead yet. Slowly, I dropped my arms.

Darkness had fallen over me like a cold, inky blanket, blotting out the sky above and the forest all around, and for a split second I thought I had died and a reaper had come to collect me. But the water serpent was still there. It had retreated, neck coiled, ready to attempt a second strike. Shadows billowed above me, then the reaper flew forward, wraith-like wings spread to resemble a massive crow.

The reaper struck the serpent in the head, and both crashed down into the water together, sending up a wall of cold spray. The wave soaked me through, and I gasped. I sat forward, heart leaping in my chest. But all I could see on the surface was rippling waves and bubbling foam.

The serpent’s head reappeared. It let out a shriek and attempted to dive away, but a force below dragged its struggling mass back under the water.

“Asher!” I shouted. Waves lapped at my legs.

Blood rose to coat the bubbling foam in crimson.

The serpent floated to the surface, dead on its back, its forked tongue hanging from its mouth. My heart thudded against the cage of my ribs, and my breath caught, waiting for more bubbles to surface, for shadows to rise, for some sign of life . . .

Then Asher appeared. He walked out of the lake, cloaked in night and dripping. He sat down hard beside me and collapsed onto his back, arms spread and chest heaving.

I leaned on my elbow beside him, still gathering my own breath. I didn’t have the wind for words, and even if I had, I wouldn’t have known what to say. I touched his hand instead, my thumb skimming along his, freckled and sandy beside his smooth and fair flesh, his hand icy cold from the black water. He smelled like silt and wet leather.

I hoped he felt my gratitude in every subtle touch.

My hand rested there beside his. “Is it dead?” I asked finally, shattering the silence.

“It’s definitely dead,” he rasped.

“You don’t kill.” It wasn’t an admonishment. I was glad I hadn’t been made into the serpent’s meal, just surprised. He’d always been so adamant on that point.

“I don’t kill,” he said, and his eyes met mine, black and bottomless and a little lost. “I felt the sisters die, and I was afraid. I don’t like the way fear tastes, Maven. It’s a horrid emotion and one I’m completely unfamiliar with. I had to come and find you. I had to stop them from taking you next . . .”

I squeezed his hand. It must have been a terrible fright, thinking he was about to lose his one and only chance at freedom. And hopefully he considered me as a friend now too—I suspected he did. I didn’t want to be the only one going all soft and squishy for the other.

“I’m grateful,” I whispered. “And I’m fine. Now catch your breath.”

I was more than grateful. My eyes took in the floating carcass of the serpent one last time, awestruck by its size and the implications.

His chest filled, then he climbed to his feet, his gaze narrowing on the floating monster, its pale belly dominating the shore. More and more of its length rose to the surface. It was so massive I couldn’t make sense of how it had ever fit in the lake at all.

“Get back to the train,” he said, expression as placid as the calming waters.

“Aren’t you coming?” I didn’t want to be where he wasn’t just then. If it wouldn’t have made me look like a scared fool, I’d have wrapped myself in his shadows like they were a security blanket.

“I have to get rid of this water guardian before Unger realizes what I’ve done. He’s already harassing the train with his giants. This will push him over the edge and kick off the games before anyone wants it. The reapers and I have been trying to slow the gods down, stop them from full-on attacking each other. Unger favors guardians. A dead one will undermine all of that,” he said, and though he remained stoic, his shadows moved in panicked waves, jerking this way and that. I hesitated, too many questions overcrowding my mind. “Go,” he urged.

I was on my feet seconds later, rushing back through the trees. If he said I should go, then I should go. I couldn’t trust my own thoughts just then. Intrusive feelings more complicated than gratitude blossomed there beside my heart, things I couldn’t parse or make sense of. Feelings that only made me even more tired and confused.

When I reached the clock tower, my socks had dried in my boots and my hair no longer dripped. The Guardian force had doubled, and some of my rage had dried up and gone hollow. The energy to feel anything but exhaustion had been sapped from me by heat and grief, feet that ached, muscles that had gone rubbery, and the shock of almost dying again and again. I was overly aware of every noise and sudden movement.

A witch I recognized from the train waved at me, and I nearly pulled my revolver on her. Every columned building was full of uniformed soldiers, the same warring bastards who’d angered the beast and caused Liesel’s death with their nonsense fighting. A bustling market lined the pavers, one growing even more elaborate than the market within the maze.

I pushed through the crowd and ignored the line, eager to be far away from them all.

“That’s her.” The voice belonged to the green warlock I’d once held a knife to, the new commander.

Two bulky Guardians headed me off, forcing me to the side of the clock tower. They patted me down. I was not cooperative. I threatened to rip their faces off and eat their tongues. Sparks of gray leaked from my fingertips, but these warlocks didn’t know magic as intimately as I did. They wouldn’t see it.

They shoved my cheek against the stone and made me bite my lip. When I fought back, they dragged me to the dirt, pinned me there, and stole my boots.

“Give them back!” I reached for the right one, the one hiding Lisbeth’s pistol, the only thing I had left of her.

Commander Aiden the Green fished inside the fur lining and pulled the pocket pistol out. It looked small in his larger hand. “Right where he said it would be.”

The guardians that held me down chuckled.

The commander shook the pistol in my face. “The high warlock says if you want this back, you have to come and ask him for it.”

Bram had returned to the Otherworld. That explained the surge of new bodies.

“You tell Bram he does not want me to come for him. The witches in my coven are more fearsome than any nightmare creature, and we do not take prisoners. That’s the only warning you’ll get, sir.” My nostrils flared and my fingers bunched into fists so tight my hands ached. “He thinks he wants us to come for him. He doesn’t. You tell him I said that.”

They sent me down into the tunnels in my socks. My feet were damp again before I reached the train.

I found the others waiting for me in the lounge.

“Where is . . . ?” Nola started to ask, then she took in my face, my missing boots, my torn brow and cut palm, and she knew. Her face fell.

“Fuck,” Ruchel breathed, falling into the cushioned chair.

Blue’s chin trembled. “But you’re alive,” she said accusingly. “You lived again somehow. You—”

Nola caught her by the back of her torn dress and spun her. Ruchel was out of her chair, her arm around Blue’s shoulders a second later.

But Blue was right. It should have been me. I knew that. I couldn’t even argue with her. I belonged in the games, not Liesel. I’d even promised Emma, and now I’d broken that promise . . .

“We need to talk,” Ruchel said, ushering Blue down the aisle. “This conversation is long overdue.”

Nola fell in on Blue’s other side, stopping her from pulling away. Ruchel sent a fleeting look full of regret over her shoulder, and then they were gone. I was alone with nothing but my own feelings of loss for company.

I collapsed into a padded chair. My socks were filthy. I swiped at my brow, and my fingers came away bloody, but I barely felt any of it. My small injuries were nothing to the gaping wound in my soul.

“I wish you were here,” I told Lisbeth, uncertain she could hear me. I liked to think she could, but sometimes it just felt like my words were bouncing off the walls for no one.

Her voice didn’t respond. For once, I didn’t know what she’d say to me.

I wanted to fight back at the Otherworld, but the will left my body in a rush of weakening limbs. I was too depleted. Too lost. Too heartbroken. I sunk in my seat. I couldn’t save them. I’d had all the gray I needed, and I couldn’t save any of them.

I had been the goddess of magic, but I couldn’t do a thing. What was the point of so much might if I couldn’t use it to protect anyone who mattered to me?

The car filled with cool magic and dark shadows. Asher loomed over me, blocking out the light with his shade. He was clean and dry, his hair pulled back. Cold coursed through my veins, and my breaths came in shallow rasps. In my mind’s eye, Lisbeth lay on the floor in a broken heap in the shop we loved, her brown gaze open but not seeing.

And then Lisbeth was poor sweet Liesel, her limp arm jutting out from beneath the tree that had claimed her. Then Emma, her body torn, her teeth pink with her own blood . . .

“I found them,” Asher said. “I found the sisters on the train, and I brought them to each other in a passenger car.”

I was glad for that, but my ability to say so had left me, choked off by the knot growing in my throat. Was I damned to that fate too? Doomed to chase my vengeance until all it got me was dead and gone, searching the life after for my baby sister?

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I hate it here,” I panted. My eyes welled, and an ache built and built to a sharp crescendo in my head. I rubbed at my brow trying to relieve the pain, but the sting of it only grew more relentless. “It wasn’t fair.”

“Lean back and breathe.” Steady and deep, Asher’s voice reached me over the rush of blood in my ears. “Close your eyes.”

I listened, latching onto the sound of him because it was the only thing stopping the spiral. My lungs slowed, and I summoned my mental mortar and pestle, crushing the sour feelings down and down and down, but it wasn’t enough.

I looked up at him. He was making the mortar and pestle too. He ground his fist into his palm, and that sparked something in me, knowing he was just as devastated as I was by this loss. I wasn’t alone in it. Not this time.

I shut my eyes, and his fingers laced in my hair and squeezed. At the sudden pull at my scalp, the tension building in my head lessened. It was like he could see exactly where it hurt. He did it again, and this time the relief was so sweet a groan slipped out of me. His fingers rubbed gentle circles there until the ache eased enough that I could open my eyes.

“I’ve lost my mind, and I don’t know how to get it back.” I pointed at the pathetic state of my feet, reassured by the knowledge that he was a patient soul I could be weak in front of without worry. He was powerful enough to take on the grief that was crushing me, a man capable of destroying the biggest monster I’d ever laid eyes on. And I wanted him to take this pain from me. I wanted him to have all of it. “Bram stole my pistol.”

“The one that belonged to your sister?” he asked softly, fingers scratching against my scalp.

“Yes,” I rasped.

He cupped my chin, his thumb brushing along my jaw. The eyes that met mine were hard and glossy as volcanic glass. “I’ll get it back for you.”

A silent sob shook my shoulders. My next breath left in a whimpering puff. “Thank you.”

But the hole was still there in my chest, mirroring the old wound I’d put in his. I so desperately wanted to feel better, wanted to think about anything other than all the wretchedness churning inside of me. I’d lost my match in this world, and I’d never have her back again. She’d been taken to a place I could not go . . .

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said, holding my eyes with his. “It’s not true. You’ve never been all alone.”

I leaned forward, dropping my brow against his side. “I hate it here, and the worst of it is, people like poor Liesel didn’t deserve to be in the games. She stole a damn cow because she wanted to be nice to it. That’s all. She didn’t deserve that death. But me? I deserve to be here. Liesel and Lisbeth were a danger to no one. I’m a danger to everyone .”

“You’re not a danger. You weren’t yourself.” He kept a hand in my hair, combing through the strands, pushing them back behind my ears. “You shouldn’t be here, and we’re going to get you out. You’re not alone.”

My throat burned. Tears dripped off my nose.

“I spent time in your mind,” he reminded me. “I know you felt connected to Lisbeth because she was your sister. Your blood. She felt like a part of you, but you’ve forgotten your coven. All of these witches, they have a small part of you too. You made that so.”

I swallowed hard. My heart pinched. “They do.”

“They’re all your sisters, Maven. Every last one of them. You are far from alone in this world.”

I reached up and grabbed his wrist, just needing more of him to touch. He let me lean there and cry on him, as understanding of my feelings as he always was. I’d never thought about things his way, but he was right. I’d broken off all those pieces of my divinity and given them away until there was nothing left. My priestesses became witches, and their children and their children’s children did too.

They were all my sisters, and not just in name. Ruchel and Blue and Nola were my sisters just as much as Lisbeth was.

Oh, but that didn’t solve anything at all. That just made the hole so much bigger. Couldn’t he see that? There was so much more to lose now.

I hissed out a breath, then swallowed the sorrow down and down and down so that it couldn’t drown me. My next lungful of air came more evenly.

I didn’t want to listen to Alwin. He was a deity with god ambition I couldn’t trust, and holding on to my vengeance was what kept me strong. It’s what kept me fighting. Anger fueled me when grief sapped me dry. If I let go of vengeance completely to grab on to my new sisters in its place . . . I didn’t know what would remain of me. Whoever I would become, they wouldn’t be much of a protector.

“Have you got your mind back yet?” he asked.

“I think so? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”

He tipped my chin up, his touch featherlight. “It matters.”

I spotted the tear in the leather at his chest. He was so gentle with me, I didn’t like looking at the wound I’d caused him, and I covered it with my palm.

Then his gaze captured mine, and there was something different in it. Something that hadn’t been there before. He leaned in so close I felt his breath on my lips.

Comfort. In that moment, he looked like comfort, and I wanted that desperately.

“What?” I asked him, knotting my fingers in his waistcoat, tugging him down even closer. “What is it?”

He licked his lips. His throat bobbed.

“You have to tell me,” I begged. Maybe I knew exactly what that look meant. Maybe there was a part of me that recognized the longing there because the mirror of it was flaming to life in me.

“I can’t.” Asher rose out of his crouch, pulling away from me. “The timing of it is all wrong.”

But I didn’t want him to go, and I grabbed at the air between us. “If you don’t tell me now, my mind will drive me mad wondering. No one is guaranteed to survive tomorrow in Wulfram. You have to tell me.”

He dragged his teeth over his bottom lip, considering me. Asher fished his journal out of his pocket. He flipped through it until he found the page he wanted, then tore it free. Folding it in half crisply, he handed it to me.

“I wrote this the day after you let me into your mind. It will explain it all. Don’t read it now. Eat. Rest.” He squeezed my hand in his over the paper, crinkling it. “Read it later. I’m going to go and make sure Liesel and Emma are settled in for their last train ride. I’ll be back tonight.”

Their last train ride . . . My throat tightened.