Tears slip down my cheeks and fall on her too-hot skin. I place my fingers on the side of her throat, but her pulse is a weak tap against my fingers.
“Come on, Arden. Fight. You are going to be okay. Just hold on.” I wish to every god above that I could give her my luck. My chest hurts.
“She’s negative,” a deep voice with the hollow tone of a cavernous space says above me.
I glance up and find Seven standing over us, only it’s a version of Seven I’ve never known before. A gold crown of stars hovers over his toffee-colored hair like a halo, and his glowing emerald pupils are ringed in silver.
“Let me give her my luck.”
“Seven?” my voice cracks.
“Yeah, it’s me, Sophia.” He reaches down and takes Arden by the arms. When his luck rises in the room, it’s clear something has changed. His dragon is no longer red but gold, and it’s massive, at least twenty times larger than before. Long moments tick by. It might be seconds, minutes, hours. Time has no meaning when your child is unconscious in your arms.
Finally her body takes on a golden glow and her lips part on a gasp.
“Oh, thank the gods.” I draw her to me, but when her eyes pop open, she reaches for Seven.
“Dad?” It’s the first time she’s ever called him that, and my eyes burn with emotion. Their hands intertwine. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”
Seven closes his eyes and the crown disappears, its energy sinking inside him. A line from Chance’s poem comes to mind:He who carries his crown within his bones. He’d meant Kieran.Mirror, mirrorhad meant the portal.They whose hunger has grown and grownmust have been referring to Rayrcore and their ravenous appetite for rare earth, andshe whose hatred is cast in stonewas Alicia, who’d hated Seven since her fateful purchase of her own engagement ring. He’d told us the truth after all.
Seven’s eyes shift to a normal color again. “It was the only thing you could have done, Arden. If you had wished he was dead, his power might have gone anywhere, even to one of the goblins.”
He doesn’t say it might have gone to Edmund, but we all must think it because Arden’s eyes slip to the boy’s body. She starts to sob.
“He must have drugged me. The last thing I remember is having a drink with him and his mother and suddenly feeling woozy. They promised to take me outside to get some air, but instead took me to the mirror. I think I passed out for a while, and then you were there. I wanted to use the wish sooner, but my brain was too foggy to know what to do. I—”
“It’s all right, Arden,” Seven says. “You did the best anyone could do. It’s over.”
She sits up between us and hugs her knees to her chest, the tears coming in waves now. I draw her protectively against my side. Seven lowers himself to sit on her other side and puts his arm around her shoulders.
“I really loved him,” she says.
I look down and see that the red ribbon is still tied around her wrist. It all makes me want to scream.
Seven and I look at each other, then each grab a side of the ribbon and pull. It breaks, and I cast it aside.
“He didn’t deserve you,” Seven says.
“But did he deserve to die? I did that.” Her eyes drift toward the body, her sobs shuddering.
I hug her tighter. “Edmund made the choice to deceive you. He made the choice to drug you and help abduct you. You didn’t do that to him, Arden. Kieran did. But Edmund put himself in Kieran’s orbit. He said yes to all this.”
She nods and presses her forehead to her knees.
Seven’s expression turns dark. “Does this change how you feel about staying in Devashire?”
I bristle and brace myself for the worst. It’s too late to go back now. Everyone knows who and what she is.
But Arden shakes her head. “No. I want to be here, with my family.” She threads her hands into both of ours.
“Truly?” I ask.
At first she doesn’t answer, just stares at her toes and releases a long, shaky breath. “Bad things happen everywhere,” she says slowly, “but I think friends and family are the only way to weather the storm. I need Dragonfly Hollow. I need you, Mom, and Dad and Grandma and Grandpa. This place has meant more to me than any of the places we lived in America. It’s not that it’s better or worse, just different, and it’s home.”
I kiss the side of her head.
“Can we go now?” she asks.
