Asha looks back and forth between me and Az, then opens her mouth.

Except it’s not Asha who speaks.

“You foolish, selfish little girl,” says a voice as low and rumbling as an underground current. “Your compulsion might be effective on Asha, but did you truly believe it would work on me?”

A moment later, Az has shoved the gag back in Asha’s mouth. She chokes on it, and Az’s eyes widen in distress.

“I’m so sorry. This won’t be forever,” he says, stroking her cheek until he catches a tear in the crook of his finger. Then he whips his attention toward me, his eyes ablaze. “You said this would work.”

“Don’t act like bringing her here wasn’t your idea in the first place,” I snap right back.

He runs his hands through his hair, staring down at the ground.

Then he pulls a stake from the ground and shoves it into Nox’s chest.

The world shatters into a million flecks of glass, then reworks itself as Az removes the stake and Nox’s chest reknits itself, tendons and skin pulling together as if woven together on one of Gunter’s looms.

He missed his heart. Az purposely missed his heart.

I have to repeat those words over and over in my mind, but still my pulse refuses to calm, my breathing refuses to steady.

I thought I lost him. Truly lost him this time.

“The next one won’t miss,” he says pointedly, holding up the stake that still drips with Nox’s blood.

“What exactly is it you want me to do?” I ask, my voice cracking at the seams.

Az shrugs. “Make her open it.”

I grit my teeth, trying my utmost to clamp down on my rising panic. “I can’t.”

Az jerks his hand, and I scream, clutching my hand over my mouth, but the stake doesn’t descend upon Nox’s chest. “Are you willing to tell him that?”

Tears wet my cheeks, matching Asha’s, but I don’t think about her tears. Don’t think about anything that threatens to make me feel guilty.

I’m so, so tired of battling that useless emotion.

“Please. Please, I know you don’t know me,” I say, addressing the Old Magic that dwells behind Asha’s eye. “But I am begging you. Anything. I’ll do anything you want if you just open that Rip and use the magic it produces to split Farin from Nox’s body.”

Asha blinks, and with the gag in her mouth, I can’t tell if the magic is even listening.

“Please, I love him. I don’t know how to survive without him. I’ve lost everything. Everything. Surely you know what that feels like. I know you do. I’ve heard the stories. Heard how you lost your siblings. Please, I’m all alone. I can’t…I can’t…”

I can’t breathe now, and Asha’s dark eye goes wide with sorrow.

“Will he agree?” I ask her.

She shakes her head.

Sorrow cuts at my heart, a stray shard not meant for me, but it cuts me all the same.

I take one glance at Nox, at the male that I love, lying motionless on the ground. I listen for his steady heartbeat, dull as it may be.

And I know what I have to do.

“You know, I had one of you living inside me once,” I whisper, my words sharp as the edge of a blade. “You know her, know what she’s like. From what I understand, you’re the one who imprisoned her, tied her up to the moon so she could no longer move about freely. They say you did it because she was careless with her hosts. That she hopped from one host to another, shredding their minds in the process. Until they couldn’t even remember how to breathe. They say you couldn’t understand it, couldn’t fathom how your sister could be so cruel. Not when you mourned the deaths of your hosts. Not when you fretted over how helpless they were against old age…”

Asha’s gaze stills, but her body begins to tremble.

“I take it you don’t like losing your hosts, do you?”

My question hangs in the air between us.

“Good. Because now I think you understand. When I take this gag off this time, you’re going to open the Rip. And you’re going to use it to separate Farin from Nox’s body. And Nox is going to wake up as himself. Because until that happens, until he wakes up and drags me away from Asha’s neck, I’m not going to stop.”

“Wait, Blaise.” There’s panic in Az’s voice, but I can barely hear him.

I sink my teeth into Asha’s neck, and I allow her blood to drown out the guilt.

I have no use for it anyway.

CHAPTER 42

ASHA

I can’t move, can’t fight back as Blaise slowly kills me, leeching the blood from my veins.

I can’t move, and Calias is drowning me all over again.

At least this time it doesn’t hurt, with Blaise’s venom coursing through me.

I don’t even care, not really. At least, I don’t think I would care if my magic wasn’t screaming drunkenly in my mind, his voice reverberating off the edges of my brain.

Asha. Please. I’m sorry.

He’s fading slowly, I can tell. Eventually, the venom will do what it did last time, push him under.

A part of me feels a swell of wry pleasure at this, because Blaise threatened my magic with my life, telling him she wouldn’t stop drinking until he did as he was told and opened the Rip.

I don’t think Blaise knows what the venom does to him, that it numbs him as much as it does me.

But my magic is resisting it, fighting to retain consciousness, even as it slowly slips from my fingertips, as easily as the silky Fabric I held just moments ago.

It’ll be funny, in a way, when Blaise kills me for no reason. When she realizes what she’s done.

But my magic is screaming. I can’t make out what exactly he’s screaming, but he certainly has much more of a will for me to live than I do at the moment.

If only he’d let it work; the venom really isn’t that awful. Sure, there’s a certain cruelty about taking away a person’s will to survive, but at least I’m not afraid.