Nox doesn’t spare me from having to look him in the eye. “Yes.”

My palm finds my mouth, and I retch. When I pull my hand away, it’s covered in blood. Asha’s blood.

Asha’s blood in my mouth, Ellie’s blood on my hands, so much blood…

Blood that wasn’t necessary to shed.

My lips form the word “no,” but it gets suffocated in my sobs as I bury my face in my hands.

Nothing. I’ve ripped my soul in two, placed Evander’s baby upon the altar of my own happiness, handed Asha over to her greatest nightmare, betrayed my friends.

For no reason whatsoever.

Nox tore his way through worlds to get back to me.

And now the girl he thought he was returning to no longer exists.

Footsteps pad against the stone floor of the cave, and soon Nox’s side presses into mine. He digs his fingers through my hair and pulls my head into his chest. I’m reminded of the first time he read to me aloud, how I almost fell asleep with my head in his lap, thinking that maybe Nox’s embrace was what peace feels like.

Now I know better. Now I know there is no peace for me. There never will be.

And though the agony still ripples through my chest, I find myself melting into him. Find myself wanting him, wishing to drown myself in him. Aching to sear away the pain in the heat of his kiss, numb myself in his love.

It’s temporary, and it’s vain, and it won’t last, because no happiness, no relief of mine, is meant to last. I know that now.

It makes me burn for him all the more, knowing that one day, one day sooner than I can bear to think about, I’ll lose him too.

I crane my neck upward to stare into the beautiful face I know I’m destined to lose, as if somewhere, in some other world, my story is being woven into a tapestry just like Zora’s, just like Nox’s. But instead of my death being rewritten and rewritten, it’s losing every piece of happiness I’ve ever tasted, all at my own hand, over and over again.

His warmth envelops me, and I find I’m alight with desire, a craving stronger than any bloodlust I’ve ever experienced. Nox stares down at me, his ice-blue eyes melting me with such beautiful sorrow.

I lift myself upward and press my lips to his, intent on drowning myself in him.

But something is wrong.

His mouth, once so hungry for mine, is hesitant against my lips, almost immobile. And when he kisses me back, there’s something in the kiss that’s sterile, like he’s trying to…

Like he’s trying to…

Like he’s trying to convince himself he wants it.

I pull away, mortification heating my cheeks.

Fears I’ve been harboring for months assail me all at once.

Nox, living another life, his arms wrapped around another woman. Nox, cradling a child who only exists in another realm.

Apology paints his beautiful features, and again he rubs at his temples. “Blaise…” he tries to explain, but I’m already crawling off of him, shame threatening to suffocate me.

“Please, you don’t have to explain,” I say hastily. Because I don’t think I’ll survive it if I hear the reason escape Nox’s lips. If I hear his heart belongs to another. If I hear he returned for one girl, only to realize the Blaise he thought he loved never existed.

That he’s returned for a liar who betrays her friends.

Nox shakes his head. “No, it’s not…I don’t think it’s you.”

I suck in a breath. “Nox, please.”

“No, there’s something wrong with me, Blaise. Something that’s different about me. It’s like I woke up in this realm, but with something missing. I don’t know if it got lost somewhere in the eyelet. But there’s something…” He grasps at his chest, then looks up at me.

It’s then that the memory of the Old Magic’s voice returns to me.

My dear, why do you assume it’s you I’ve chosen to curse?

CHAPTER 51

MARCUS

My daughter is amazing.

My daughter is amazing, and I hate that I’m leaving her.

I watch Amity as she swaddles Evander and Ellie’s baby, keeping the child tucked in close against her chest as she whispers absentmindedly to her.

She likes to hold the child while Evander and Ellie sleep, both of them having a tendency to pass out from exhaustion despite attempting to take shifts awake with their daughter.

But they need not worry. Their little girl is in the best of hands.

Amity, of course, isn’t capable of single-tasking, and I watch her rifle through her grimoire with one hand as she lays the child gently down in her lap.

My heart aches as Amity flips through the pages, underlining and circling sections with her quill.

She searches for a cure, and I don’t quite have the heart to tell her there is none.

That’s the thing about the Rip.

There’s no flax here. At least, no flax that hasn’t already been harvested. Amity reminds me that this means there’s someone out there selling the flax, and that we need only locate those merchants to find the cure for my illness, but even if that’s true, I know better than to think I’ll make it that long.

My body is failing me.

It’s a strange sensation, given I’ve always been so adamant about training it, bending my muscles into submission, disciplining my body rigorously to endure whatever is thrown my way.

But my strength is wilting. I managed to hold my bow while Ellie was in labor, but I was running off the thrill and necessity of the moment. Now I feel the consequences seeping exhaustion into my very bones.

I’m never quite rid of the urge to cough, which has only worsened since that mere pounced on me, crushing at least one, if not multiple, ribs.

I wish Piper were here. It’s ripping my soul to shreds that I’m spending the last of my days without her. It’s not that I want her to see me like this. The idea of her watching me wither away makes me sick. But I miss her laugh, her morbid sense of humor. If she were here, she’d poke me in the shoulder and make some comment about how she likes seeing my vulnerable side.

I can’t stand the thought that one of these days, someone, Lydia probably, is going to bring her the news that I’m gone.