“Make Bryce heal Levi,” she said to Harvey. “This was all Bryce’s plan—make him fix what he’d done. And then I will give him this.” She took the king’s token out of her pocket. If this game had played out differently, then maybe Enne could’ve used Veil’s talent sealed inside to restore her own. To reclaim the identity that history had already laid out for her: the last surviving Mizer.
But Enne didn’t need this power to know who she was. She’d always had the power to define herself.
“What will it do?” Harvey asked her.
“It will strip him of his power,” Enne answered, the same way her own corrupted talent had done to Arabella.
“But then...” Harvey glanced at Levi fretfully. “Whether or not he heals Levi, it won’t matter. You can’t save Levi unless you save—”
“I’ll never take that,” Bryce spat.
“I can make you,” Harvey murmured. “I don’t want to, but I—”
“You were myfriend,” Bryce growled. “You always whined at the thought of using your talent. You were always holier-than-thou. But you’d stoop that low, after all, wouldn’t you? How does that make you any better than me?”
“It doesn’t,” Harvey answered. “It just makes me better than who I used to be.”
Then Harvey smiled. Wide, toothy, and charming. It was unsettling, watching the spell it cast over Bryce, how his shoulders relaxed, how a matching, lopsided grin stretched across his own face. Utterly placated.
Then Rebecca lunged forward, and Grace leaped. She landed on Rebecca’s back and brought her to the ground. “If you take away his talents, then the bargains will all break. And I’ll...”
Grace pinned Rebecca’s arms to the floor. “Please go on,” Grace sneered at her. “Cry to me about your happy ending.”
Across the room, Levi had heaved himself back up to standing, and he staggered to Enne’s side. He rested his hand on Enne’s shoulder, and she squeezed it, blinking back more tears. “I haven’t given up,” he whispered in her ear. “And neither should you.”
Enne nodded shakily, hating that he was right. They had bested impossible choices before.
She held out the token.
“I’m going to make a deal with you, Bryce,” Harvey said, his voice shaking. “I want you to take Enne’s coin—take it, take the shade inside of it. And you can have...” He hesitated. “What is it you want in return?”
Bryce still had the eerie grin on his face. But his voice cracked when he rasped, “Please, I don’t want to die.”
“We’re notsparing you,” Delaney snapped.
But Harvey paid her no attention. “That’s fine,” he said sadly. “We can do that.”
“Bryce!” Rebecca called. “Bryce, don’t—”
Bryce grasped Enne’s hand and took the token.
Without her talent, Enne could no longer see the shade as it snaked up Bryce’s arm, but she could see from the pain flashing across Bryce’s face once the curse took hold. He screamed and sank to his knees, and Harvey crumpled with him, his arms wrapped around Bryce’s shoulders.
Rebecca’s face shifted back to her own, and Grace wrenched herself off of her as Rebecca vomited. The sick was crimson and thin like water. Enne shuddered watching Rebecca as the illness Bryce had cured unwound, as she got sick again and again and again, each heaving weaker than the one preceding it.
To Enne’s left, Sophia blinked wildly then stumbled back until she pressed against the prison’s cinder block wall. Her hand clutched at the scarlet bodice of her dress, nails digging into the fabric. “I...I remember. I remember my name. I...”
“Tock,”Lola breathed, dropping her scalpel to the ground with a clatter.
Tock’s breath hitched as Lola turned around and threw her arms around her.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Lola told her, and Tock hugged her back, squeezed her until she lifted Lola off the floor.
“I missed you,” Tock told her, her voice muffled in Lola’s blazer.
In the midst of it all, Harvey’s smile had faded, and Bryce’s eyes flew open, finally wide and alert. Without his talent, they were an almost colorless shade of blue. “Getoffme,” he croaked, shoving Harvey away. He scrambled to where Rebecca lay dying, surrounded by a pool of so much blood it was a wonder any was left inside her.
Paying no mind to the sick, Bryce wrapped his arms around her. “Please don’t go,” he told her. “I never meant to do this to you.”
