The sphere is shattered. My legs feel like jelly, and I have to catch myself with my hands against the rough volcanic ground, dizziness washing over me in waves.
Thaddeus lies flat on the ground, smoke rising from his charred body. The smell makes me want to gag—burnt flesh and ozone and a chemical that shouldn’t exist.
But I don’t feel guilty. Not even a little bit. Because Thaddeus killed Oliver. He killed me multiple times. He deserves this.
“Is he dead?” I ask Logan, gasping for breath, gazing around at the scorched earth around us. “Please tell me he’s dead.”
Then, as if in response, Thaddeus’s fingers twitch. A crack appears in the blackened skin of his chest. Then another. Fresh pink flesh shows through, like watching a snake shed its skin in fast-forward.
“How?” I reach for my electricity—mylightning—but it barely crackles. “I just hit you with actual lightning! From the sky!”
Logan’s already moving, dropping to one knee beside Thaddeus’s healing form, his dagger plunging into our professor’s chest with surgical precision. Right through the heart. No hesitation, no dramatic speech—just swift, brutal efficiency, followed by a sickening twist of the blade.
Thaddeus’s skin goes gray, spreading from the wound until he looks less like a person and more like someone carved a statue from cigarette ash.
We killed him. Thaddeus is dead now. Really, truly dead. If he isn’t… then fuck my life. Literally. Because I’m pretty sure I won’t have a life anymore, thanks to Thaddeus’s determination to take it from me.
Still, none of it matters, because we didn’t save Oliver.
The weight of it crashes over me like a tsunami. Logan knew we wouldn’t have time, but he let me try anyway, even with his powers draining from the previous failed attempts. He did it for me. Because I told him I’d hate him for the rest of my life if he didn’t let me try one final time.
Now Oliver’s dead anyway. And when I turn to look at his body, the unfairness of it makes me want to scream again, to call down more lightning from the sky until the entire mountain burns.
“I’m so sorry,” I say softly. “We tried. Gods, Oliver, we tried so hard.”
Then, I hear it. A wet, rattling breath.
“Holy—” I scramble toward Oliver on my hands and knees, relief rushing through me faster than any electricity in the world. “He’s alive. Logan, he’s still alive!”
Logan’s next to me in a second, his arms around my shoulders, pulling me close.
“The wound’s too deep,” he murmurs in my ear, holding me tighter. “There’s nothing we can do.”
“No, don’t say that.” I reach for Oliver’s hand, as if that could be enough to help him. “There has to be something. Healing magic or—” My voice rises with hysteria. “You can go back again. One more time. Please, Logan, just one more?—”
“I can’t go back to any point before us exiting the passages,” he snaps at me—literally snaps. “By then, it was already too late.”
As the words leave his lips, I know with a sinking feeling that he’s right. Thaddeus had all but killed Oliver by the time we stepped out of those passages. Not even fire travel could get us up there fast enough to stop him.
Silence descends around us.
Then, somehow, Oliver speaks.
“You,” he says as his eyes flutter open, blood bubbling on his lips as he focuses with terrible clarity on Logan. “You killed him. You killed Miles.”
My blood turns to ice. The air goes still. No breeze, no nothing. Even my fried nerves stop their painful tingling.
Then, thunder rumbles overhead, low and ominous, and the first fat drops of hot rain start to fall.
“I saw the notes,” Oliver forces the words out. “Miles’s research.”
Logan’s gone completely still beside me. His fingers dig into my shoulders, not painfully, but desperately. Like I’m the only thing keeping him anchored to the scorched earth below us.
“He knew what you are.” Oliver’s breathing gets shallower, wetter. “And then he was dead.”
Tears burn my eyes, mixing with the rain on my cheeks. “Oliver, please,” I beg, unable to process anything other than the fact that he’s still alive. “Hold on. We’ll get you help. Just hold on.”
His grip on my hand loosens.
