I think of Asha. Asha, who forgave the king who planned to slaughter her the morning after her wedding. Asha, who…
Asha would have forgiven me. Fates, she probably already had.
In some ways, it makes it hurt worse, knowing that. Knowing I’d lost such a friend, even if a friendship between us had only been potential.
It’s the type of pain the parasite couldn’t understand, didn’t know to look for, so I hold on to it, allow it to roll through me.
It only feels like I’m drowning. I take a breath to remind myself I am not.
“Only moments now,” Az says, his sage-green eyes fixed on Asha’s corpse. “She’ll turn to dust any moment now.”
“No,” says a voice, ominous and familiar. One that has haunted my nightmares since the day I forced Asha to open the Rip. Since I forced him to open the Rip. “No, Azrael. She won’t.”
Az’s eyes go wide, his cheeks sallow. Sweat breaks against the line between his forehead and hairline, and his lungs work rapidly underneath my forearm, where I have him pinned.
“No,” he whispers. “You’re just part of the illusion.”
Something blue glows in the pits of Az’s eyes.
I am afraid to look, but there’s no pretending it away.
So I turn and stare the Old Magic in the face.
He’s small. A vibrant blue light that I might have considered gentle if I didn’t know any better.
“Are you happy now, young Azrael? Are you pleased with what you’ve done?”
Beneath my clutches, Az shakes.
“I listened, you know,” says the voice, the voice that echoes not around us, but from inside of us. “All those years, all those dreams you shared with her. Tell me, child. Was she worth it?”
Az’s eyes fix on the Old Magic.
Even Kiran’s cries have gone silent.
“TELL ME!”
Az’s mouth hangs open.
And then a sob escapes his mouth.
It’s strangled and pitiful, and I recognize it too, just like I recognized Kiran’s grief, his loss.
He doesn’t speak it, but the words are written in the widening of his eyes, the slackness of his jaw—What have I done?
His gaze fixes on Asha, and I watch for the first time as the truth washes over him. As he looks at her body, and sees not an illusion he’s outsmarted, but his childhood friend, her body splayed out on the floor, never to rise again.
It’s in that moment that I realize Asha’s done it.
That in her death, she’s saved us all.
CHAPTER 114
PIPER
Out of the woods creep what must be three dozen Others, ranging from the feline mere to the winged wyverns.
My heart shudders, my feet wobbling on the cool earth below me.
I’ve been camped out by the Rip since Blaise left, waiting.
I have no way of knowing if Blaise’s plan worked, whether she managed to distract Azrael enough for me to bend the will of the Others to my own.
Or if she’s ashes in the desert.
What I do know is that they are coming, and as I can’t fight off a host of them on my own, I have two choices.
Run, or try.
But then my Gift tugs at my heart, stoking my bloodstream like the warm glow of a hearth, the swell of a gentle flame.
Are you ready? I ask my Gift, though I wonder if I’m asking myself.
It responds with one resounding note, like a bird singing in the heavens.
I lift the flute to my lips, and together, my Gift and I play.
The tune is like the first we’d attempted to woo the Others, though different in some ways. While the other was infused with staccato notes of urgency and excitement, this one is as deep as a well and as wide as a mural.
