“N-no.” Shaking her head, Vi stumbled a few steps back. “No, Taavin, I—”
Taavin stood slowly, looking to her. He advanced and Vi took another wide step—too wide. She stumbled, falling, landing hard because she didn’t even bother to catch herself.
“No, not this… don’t make me do this.”
“Don’t you hate me now?” His face was shadowed by the flame behind him, his mess of hair falling into his shining eyes. “Aren’t I the one who betrayed you?”
“Taavin, if I do this, you will die.” The words were a whisper, little more than a breath. “I have seen this—I told you. I will not burn you alive.”
“It’s because of me your father will die. I betrayed you, Vi.”
“Stop,” she pleaded. He was speaking truth right to the darkest part of her—the part she so desperately wanted to ignore.
“You wanted to take him to Norin if he wished, and I stopped that from happening.”
“Taavin—”
“You must do this!” His expression was a cross between pained and impatient. “This is the only way. This is the only path forward.”
“I’m not a murderer!”
“Then hate me more for making you one.” Taavin knelt before her. Even as she shouted at him, his voice didn’t waver and his gaze was set. He really was going to let her kill him. “Hate me because I will never let myself love you again. Hate me because you truly are the cause of all my torment. You are my nightmares. It was always you.”
Hate me, because I now hate you, his eyes said. That same burning feeling she’d embraced the other night was sparking again within the charred husk of her ribs. She wanted to sob and let out all the tears it felt like she’d been holding in for a lifetime. But if they fell now, they would merely evaporate on her cheeks.
“You must do this,” he reiterated, his voice gone soft. Taavin reached for her arm, pulling her upright.
“What happens if it doesn’t work?” Vi croaked, standing on shaking knees. “What happens if you’re wrong and I just kill you?”
“Death comes for us all.” He echoed the same sentiment as the first time she’d told him he was going to die. He looked her right in the eyes, so close his features went blurry. Perhaps, somehow, if everything he was saying was true, some part of him had known even then. “And if I am wrong, death will come for me before you when Raspian walks this earth once more… and you will have the satisfaction of killing someone else who wronged you.”
“You’re not making any sense!” She wanted to slap him. “Do you hear yourself? This isn’t logical and this magic, it doesn’t exist, and—”
“The watch was power—my power mingled with Yargen’s, and yours,” he spoke over her hastily. His hands gripped her shoulders, hard. “Layers and layers of magic, Vi… countless times. Countless attempts to stop this failed future from coming to pass. You have to return that power that’s in me to her, along with you, along with the scythe. Only that will give her enough power to send you back.”
“You truly are mad.”
“And you truly are the worst thing to have ever happened to me,” he seethed, so close their noses almost touched. Part of her wanted to kiss him, kiss the pain away. The other part of her was more tempted by the minute to give in and kill him. He was begging for it, after all. “Now, help me do this.”
Why was the line between love and hate so confusingly thin? She stared at his back, at the scythe positioned on the pedestal before the flame.
She wondered if she was about to trade some part of her soul—and if so, for what. It didn’t feel like much of her soul was left. Whatever was still there after all she’d endured, she may as well give to the Goddess.
Taavin knelt and Vi hovered behind him, swaying unsteadily.
Without so much as looking back at her—without even reaffirming what it was they were about to do one final time—Taavin begin to chant.
The words blurred together into a litany that would be his dirge. She could stop this now. She could clamp her hands over his lips and silence those infernal words that were already flowing through her.
But if she did that… then what? Taavin would likely perish anyway, as fodder to bring about a dark god. She would likely die fighting that same god. The world would end. Her family would be forever lost.
Perhaps Taavin was the one to have it right all along—death comes for us all—and Vi was the one to have her worries tied around the wrong priorities.
Vi took a slow step forward. She knew her role. She’d do it just like she had in the vision she was given back in Soricium.
Her hands settled slowly on Taavin’s shoulders. Light was already peeling off of him, merging with the halo of brightness surrounding the flame. Barely-formed glyphs seemed to wrap, collapse, and form anew in complex patterns Vi couldn’t follow.
His magic, shimmering and bright, pulled hers forth as well. Together, it looked almost like a white-hot fire, but with a cool pale blue at the edges. Vi gave into the flow like a ship to a current. She shut off her mind and let him pull her along.
