My father sits at the dining room table, looking stunned as I haul her out of her room.

He shoots up from the table. “Nox, what do you think—”

I hold my hand up to stop him. “I listened to what you said, Father. And believe me, I respect it. More than you could possibly know. But she’s got to get up. Wallowing in bed all day isn’t helping her.”

I set my mother down, though I keep a gentle grip on her shoulders.

“My little girl…” she keeps weeping, and as gently as I can muster, I lift her chin to look at me.

“I’m so sorry that Zora is gone. But Father is here. I’m here. That’s going to have to be enough.”

For a moment, my mother’s face goes blank, and I wonder if I’ve made a huge mistake, if this is the most insensitive thing that’s ever been done. If I’m prowling around this realm and all the others just messing things up.

But then my mother peers up at me, and slowly, recognition flares in her eyes, flickering in the pale lantern light by which my father was penning the ledgers.

“Nox,” she whispers, using my name for the first time in what I realize must be years.

I don’t know what to say, so I just nod.

She lets out a strangled sob, then tucks her head into my chest. “My boy…” she cries this time.

And now that she’s upright and out of bed, I let her.

CHAPTER 84

PIPER

We arrive at the Rip sooner than I expect to. It took us a week to travel from Avelea, across the ravine, to Charshon.

The truth is, I haven’t been sure I wanted to get here quickly.

I’m still unconvinced the power enhancement I’ll receive from the faerie-made flute and proximity to the Rip will be enough to control a single Other, much less an entire army of them. An entire army that is already under Az’s control.

But my feet don’t stop placing one in front of the other, so naturally, we eventually arrive.

I feel it before I see it.

A gentle thrum in the soil, the reverberation of a string recently plucked.

The whistle of the wind cutting through the grass, the rattle of flax.

Marcus and Amity were here, though it’s been weeks now. It’s foolish and fruitless, but I search for signs of them, anyway.

I find none, of course.

Blaise pulls her hood over her head as we approach, and though there’s an evening chill, I have a suspicion this is not her reasoning.

The last time Blaise was here, she betrayed her friends, the people who cared the most about her. She betrayed them for a male who left her in the end.

I imagine it can’t be pleasant returning. Like if I’d tried to return to the Coup right after sinking an arrow through Bronger’s chest.

I’m not sure why I do it, but I find Blaise’s hand under her robe sleeves. Her skin is ice cold to the touch, but I give her fingers a gentle squeeze. At first, she goes rigid, and I think perhaps I made a mistake, but when I go to pull away, she links her fingers over my palm and squeezes back. A silent plea not to let go. Not yet.

So I don’t.

Not until we reach the Rip.

It gapes before us, and though I can’t see it, I can feel it. A chasm that rips through the very air, one that I might fall into if I get too close. It’s the feeling of standing at the side of a cliff, staring down into the crashing waves and wondering if you’d survive if the edge went crumbling out from underneath you.

My heart pounds in my chest as the Fabric calls to me, a gentle but sorrowful hum. As if it were apologizing for causing us so much trouble.

There’s a part of me that longs to reach out, to stroke it like one might a wounded pet, but I refrain.

Because then I see them.

The silvery runes glimmer in the darkness, forming a circlet in thin air.

“What are the chances this will actually work?” asks Blaise.

My Gift hums that noncommittal note.

“It’s a toss-up,” I say, and then I raise the flute to my lips and play.

Touching my lips to the flute is like leaning in for a kiss, my Gift melting into the instrument, melding with its wood and the wind and producing the most lovely of songs.

It’s a call, above all else, and as my fingers strum the keys, I lose myself in the gentle sway of the music, the notes that are not words but might as well be.

Come back, my Gift whispers into the wind. Then with a more sorrowful, drawn-out note. You don’t belong here, but I can lead you home.

I’m not sure how long I play, the only indication of time being that my shoulders and back ache from holding the flute upright.

Nothing happens.

Nothing comes.

Eventually, either my Gift reaches the end of the tune or grows disheartened, because the music sputters out.

Blaise swallows next to me, blinking away tears.

I lower the flute, Blaise’s disappointment an external manifestation of the sinking feeling in my stomach.

“I’m sorry,” Blaise says, slinging the tears away with frantic swipes of her hands. “I don’t know what’s going on with me.”

I think I probably do.

“You were hoping to make it up to them, weren’t you?”

Blaise won’t look at me. She just sniffles then lets out a wry laugh. “Stupid, I know. As if anything I could do could fix what I’ve taken away from them.”