“You don’t?”

I keep my voice down, noticing Amity watching us intently as she bobs up and down on her and Marcus’s horse. “I think if she’s hurt Asha…”

“If? You saw the blood back there.”

I sigh. “I think he won’t hesitate to kill her if he ever sees her again.”

“Like he did his brother’s wife.”

“In the heat of the moment,” I add.

“Are you defending him?” Evander snaps.

I go silent in answer.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“I know you’re worried about her,” I say, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t riled. “And Evander, I don’t want Kiran hunting her down any more than you do, but if she’s killed Asha…”

“Then what? We abandon her? When we should have seen it coming? Should have realized she was too weak to control her cravings?”

I shake my head. “Stop.”

“Stop what?”

“You have to stop taking responsibility for what Blaise does and doesn’t do. You’re like…” I groan, searching for the right words. “You’re like one of those parents whose children grow up to be menaces to society, but you can’t see them for who they’ve become. All you can see is a toddler who doesn’t know any better than to put their hand to the stove. But Blaise isn’t a child any longer, Evander. At some point, you have to stop thinking it’s your fault if she reaches out and touches something that ends up burning her. That ends up burning everyone else.”

“Have you given up on her?” For a moment, I think it’s an accusation, a way to make me feel guilty, and anger roils up within me. How dare he? Especially after how patient I’ve been with all this. With his rash promises and following Blaise out here and…

“Because if so, I need to know how you do it,” he says, and it’s only then that I recognize the despair in his voice. That he isn’t trying to accuse me at all, but that he genuinely doesn’t know.

“No.” I take a deep breath. “I haven’t given up on her. She’s my friend too, you know. And maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I only feel this way because I can’t bring myself to believe that Asha is really…I do love her—Blaise, I mean. But Evander, if you try to save someone who’s drowning, but they won’t let you, and they grab ahold of your neck and climb onto your back, flailing…Well, you’re not doing them any good, are you? You’ll both just end up drowned.”

“And the people I love, too.” He caresses my belly absentmindedly.

“Us, too,” I say, craning my neck upward and kissing him on the cheek.

“But, El? How do you let go of someone who’s drowning? How do you live with yourself?”

I don’t have an answer to that.

CHAPTER 33

NOX

Earth fills my mouth, invading the space between my teeth as I land. Coupled with the relief of hitting solid ground comes the fading of my exhilaration, which means the throbbing in my leg is about to make a reappearance. If this body were a vampire’s, it would have healed by now. My fae muscles and bones and sinews will reknit themselves, but only if I can get away from the scorpion long enough to rest.

I push myself to my feet, ignoring the stab of pain that begs me not to put any weight on my leg.

Farin is nowhere to be found.

Zora has stopped throwing rocks at the scorpion. She takes one glance at me, realizes I’ve made it out of the pit, then spins on her heel and breaks into a run.

I follow suit.

We run, our bodies cutting through the brush, even as the sound of trees rent from their roots follows close behind us. The scorpion barrels through the vegetation to get to us, but we’re smaller, and maneuvering trees is a quicker feat than crushing them.

All the while, my leg aches, but running seems to be clearing the venom from my head.

Hopefully that doesn’t mean I’m just providing it with a faster ride to my heart. I probably am, but there’s no time to think of that now.

Zora’s breath labors just ahead of me.

She doesn’t turn to make sure I follow, but she doesn’t have to with her fae hearing.

We race to the edge of the forest. Zora halts, holding a hand out for me to do the same. I have just enough time to dig my heels into the ground as pebbles and clots of dirt go crumbling off the cliffside directly in front of me.

My fae vision allows me to follow the pebbles’ descent, but even I can’t see the bottom of the canyon through the fog that swirls in its depths.

“Come on.” Zora jerks her head to the side and sets off, sprinting across the edge of the canyon.

I follow, trying not to think about the crumbling density of earth at the edges of canyons like this. How well—or not—the ground adheres to itself.

After a moment, I see what she is aiming for: a bridge that connects this side of the canyon to the other.

It looks to have been made a while ago.

I try not to think about that, either.

We reach the bridge just as the tree line splinters behind us, near the spot I almost went careening over the edge.

One glance behind me reveals the scorpion, its claws digging into the ledge to keep from toppling over. It occurs to me it could probably crawl down the canyon and back up to get to us, but it hisses when it peers downward. I try not to think about what the fog obscures if even the scorpion fears it.

“Would have been nice if it had toppled over the edge,” says Zora, hesitating at the entrance to the bridge.

“It never seems to work out that way, does it?”

For a moment, I think we both consider sprinting back into the forest. The bridge consists of rotting wooden slats strung together with ropes that look to be fraying at the edges. No handrails. Just a row of wooden bars, spaced out like stepping stones in a garden.

We exchange a morbid glance.

Then we run across the bridge.

There’s an unfortunate amount of rebound on the bridge, especially with the two of us racing across it. Every time Zora’s foot lands on a plank, it sends the ones beneath my feet ricocheting toward the sky. The result necessitates an extreme feat of balance, and it impedes our progress. One can only run so quickly across an ever-changing platform without tumbling off. Still, we make it halfway across before the scorpion reaches the bridge at all.

Not that halfway is all that helpful when all the scorpion has to do to send us plummeting to our deaths is slice the ropes with its pincers.

“I don’t think scorpions are that intelligent,” Zora says between huffs when I bring it up.