Instead, I stay right where I am. “If someone came for you the way Thad did for me, I’d kill him without a second thought, too,” I tell him. “And if this is who we are now—if this is who the Council is forcing us to be—then at least we’re in it together.”
He watches me like he’s gazing into my soul, like he’s searching for any proof of doubt. Then, seemingly satisfied, he nods and moves to the bodies with focused intensity.
My stomach lurches at the sight of them.
Oliver’s blood is mixing with rainwater, turning everything pink. Thaddeus looks like someone carved him out of solidified lava, like the bodies of the Pompeii survivors I saw with my parents when we went to Italy a few years ago.
“We need to burn them before someone comes looking,” Logan says. “We’ll turn them to ash. They’ll be no evidence left.”
“Witch fire doesn’t burn hot enough to turn bones to ash,” I remind him, even though it seems like such a basic thing to forget. “Kieran spent like twenty minutes on it in class the other day. Something about bone density. Not to mention that it’s raining?—”
“And fire isn’t supposed to burn black and take you back in time, and witches aren’t supposed to be able to create and wieldlightning.” Logan stands completely still, as controlled as ever. “The rules don’t apply to us, Jade. And here on the Crown, we’re unstoppable.”
He holds out his hand, and even now, with death all around us, my heart skips from how close he is.
But I don’t take it. Because he’s wrong—we’renotunstoppable. If we were, Oliver would still be alive. Thad, too.
But instead of bringing up our failures, I glance at Thad’s grim, ashy remains. Because we’re really doing this. Burning bodies. Covering up murders.
Oliver was laughing and dancing with me two hours ago. Maybe even one. Time doesn’t make sense anymore, now that it’s no longer a tangible thing.
Logan turns away from me, looking deep in thought. “We need to bring them to the center.” He’s all business now, like we’re discussing homework instead of corpse disposal. “The strongest part of the circle.”
Thaddeus is easy to move, since his ash-statue form weighs almost nothing. But as we drag Oliver’s body to the center of the Crown, I try not to think about how Evie’s going to wake up tomorrow without a brother, and that she’ll never know what really happened to him.
How am I supposed to face her? To comfort her? Tolieto her?
“Ready?” Logan takes his position across from me, the bodies laid out between us.
“No.” My hands shake as I raise them. “But let’s do it anyway.”
“Focus on the hottest flame you can create.” His own fire springs to life, dancing across his palms in shades of blue, purple, and that now-familiar black at the edges. “Throw some electricity—lightning—into the mix, too. Whatever you have left after using it earlier. Then let the Crown do the rest.”
I call my fire, orange flames bursting from my hands. They’re larger than I intended, fed by the emotional chaos churning inside me and the amplification of the Crown. And while I don’t have much lightning left, I add in a few sparks, reveling in the way they glow in the firelight.
“Good.” Logan’s fire is a controlled masterpiece, those defined, dark edges standing out to me more now that I know what they represent. “Now, direct it at them. Don’t hold back.”
I do as instructed, forcing myself to focus on the practical instead of the emotional, and our flames meet in the middle, an inferno of silver and black.
The bodies don’t burn. They disintegrate. Layer by layer, like watching time-lapse footage in reverse. Flesh, bone, and even Thaddeus’s strange form breaks apart into increasingly smaller pieces until there’s nothing left but ash mixing with the rain.
“It’s done.” Logan takes a deep breath and wipes off his hands, exhaustion evident in every line of his body.
“How are we going to explain this?” I stare at the ash, unable to fully comprehend that those piles were once people I knew and cared about. “Oliver and Thad just... disappearing? Everyone knows I went to the ball with Oliver. And now we’ve been gone for who knows how long. They’re going to know we were involved.”
“I can handle most of it.” He runs a hand through his soaked hair, looking even more exhausted by my questions. “Compulsion, remember? I’ll adjust memories, make people remember seeing us at different times, in different places. Create alibis.” He moves closer, his eyes so intense I’d swear he was trying to compelme. “But Jade, listen to me. You can never tell Evie what happened here. You can never tellanyone.”
He’s right. I know he’s right. But that doesn’t make it hurt less. Because after every night Evie’s covered for me, this is how I’ll repay her. With the ultimate betrayal.
Logan takes one step closer. “Promise me you’ll keep this secret.” His voice drops to that dangerous quiet. “No matter what.”
“I promise.” The words taste like ash, but I force myself to hold his gaze anyway. “But what if someone figures it out? What if?—”
“They won’t.” He says it so simply, like it’s already decided. “I won’t let them.”
The intensity in the way he says it makes me believe him. After all, he turned back time to save my life. He pushed his power beyond what he ever has.
By this point, I don’t think there’s anything hewouldn’tdo for me.
