He stumbles backward, the dagger I grabbed from his belt jutting from his chest.
From his heart.
My hands are shaking, and I step away, expecting him to lunge at me with his last breaths.
But Farin doesn’t lunge.
Farin smiles.
And it’s not the wicked, terrifying smile of a few moments ago.
It’s the smile a husband gives his wife as she’s holding his hand at his deathbed. It’s a smile that says thank you for the life you’ve given me and I’m sorry that I’m leaving and that we couldn’t have had longer.
My hand goes to my mouth, realization battering my body before it scourges my mind.
What have I done?
“No.” The plea escapes my mouth in a whisper, and I find myself reaching toward Farin, like I think if I remove the dagger from his heart, I can take back the wound I inflicted too.
“No.” The word comes out as a sob, and sadness creeps over Farin’s smile.
He stumbles again, and this time it’s toward me, pushing both of us into the cave wall as I try to support his weight, while he tries to hold himself up with his palm pressed up against the wall behind us.
“You tricked me,” I scream, though it’s gargled with tears. I want to shove him in anger, but I can’t, not when any moment now, he’ll take his last breath and…
His voice is strained, weak. “Yeah. I’m told I have a problem with that.”
“Why?” I ask, and I’m so angry, so enraged, that it comes out in a bed of hot tears.
“You know why,” he says, and he has the audacity to give me that lopsided grin. The boyish, I’ve-been-up-to-something grin that makes my heart beat wildly in my chest.
He’s right. I do know. Because in a few moments, Farin will die, and I’ll have been the one to kill him.
Meaning a Rip will open up, one that will take me to another world. A portal out of this death-trap of an island.
“How did you know?” I breathe.
“Come now, Wanderer,” Farin says, straining the teasing into his voice. “You never give me any credit. The sailor on the beach—you were so distraught… when I killed him. I couldn’t figure it out. Not when you’d planned…” He squeezes his eyes shut as he fights for breath. The dagger in his chest bobs. “But then you tried to kill me. When you could have tried any time before. I knew then—how you open Rips.”
I shake my head, disbelieving. “Why didn’t you tell me you knew? We could have found a way off the island. We could have found a way off together. Then we could have found the eyelet and…” I stop.
Farin’s straining to stand upright; he uses his finger to wipe away my tears. “You know as well as I do that this is the only way you get out of here alive.”
“I don’t want to go. Not without you,” I say, and I’m sobbing now, and panic is overtaking my chest.
“I know. To be honest, I’m not thrilled about the situation either.” Tears glimmer in his eyes, but they shine with adoration. And something I’ve yet to see in them. Hope.
“Please don’t die,” I whisper, and now it’s the cave wall holding me up, and Farin pressed against me, his warmth dizzying.
“I have to. You know that,” he says, and his voice is as warm and gentle as his arms the night he shielded me from the cold.
“Please. I’m so tired of being alone,” I say, and now my heart is breaking, as if Farin’s isn’t the one with a hilt jutting out of it.
It hurts.
“We still don’t know what happens if I die over here,” he says, a glint of teasing in his voice. “Just think. You might be crying over nothing. I might just wake up beside you, in whatever world you end up in.”
It’s a stupid thought. A stupid, idiotic thought.
“You don’t even have a body to go back to,” I say, choking on the truth of those words.
He shrugs, though it must hurt him to do so. “A rather minor hurdle if you ask me.”
I want so badly to hit him, but he lets his arm slip down to my hip as he leans on me.
“Wanderer. I’ve been dead before. I know we don’t stop existing when we die.”
“You said it was miserable where you were,” I whisper.
He shrugs. “I didn’t exactly have anything to claw my way back to, then.”
“I’m afraid I won’t remember you,” I whisper, and his knees stumble, but he holds steady. “I don’t always remember. Some of my lives…things get erased…”
Something glints in his eyes.
“Well, then. It’s a good thing I love a good chase, isn’t it?” he whispers.
And then, with all the life Farin has left in him, he kisses me, and it’s fire and ice, and death and life, and sorrow and joy, and it rips my heart clean out of my chest.
