Barely.
“I could have saved him,” she choked out, glaring up at me. “Why didn’t you let me save him?”
I didn’t answer, still too busy trying to corral my violent surge of power. Cold sweat broke out across my forehead. Phantom’s glowing eyes fixed on me, a low growl rumbling in his chest, as if he knew something wasn’t right.
“Something…” Nova held her hands out in front of her, studying the shadows that flickered weakly around her fingers. “Anything. Why can’t I saveanything?”
Before I could find the words to reply, Thalia appeared in front of Nova, wearing her characteristically stoic expression despite the tears staining her cheeks. “You can save plenty,” she said, bluntly as always. “But only if we live to see another day. Now stop wallowing and let’s move.”
Nova opened her mouth to argue but stopped as she seemed to register the raw pain in Thalia’s expression. She rose slowly to her feet, dripping a trail of scarlet as she did. Her arm was bleeding more profusely than I’d realized; the cut that Order bastard had left was deep and jagged.
I caught her as she swayed, and she leaned against me, clearly dizzy from the blood loss.
Finch shifted anxiously from foot to foot. “We’ve secured and stationed more help along the path to the Nocturnus Road,” he informed us, his voice edged with grief. He seemed to be trying—and failing—not to look toward Orin’s body. “We’ll hold off anyone who tries to stop you. But you need to go. Now.”
Nova lifted her head and cast one last look at her fallen mentor. Her breaths came in short, ragged bursts. Her fists clenched into my shirt, her balance still teetering on the edge of loss.
“Now,” Finch urged, and Nova’s broken gaze moved to me. Her eyes were oddly vacant, looking through me rather than at me. The weight of all that had happened over the past days seemed to be catching up and crashing down on her all at once.
It had been far too long since that mental bond between us had worked properly, but for whatever reason, her thoughts reached me now. Scattered, fragmentary, but the message was clear?—
I don’t know how much more of this I can take.
With considerable effort, I managed to send a thread of my magic around her and her wound—not the new, corrupted, consuming side of that magic, but something closer to what Iwas used to controlling. Something brighter. Warmer. She sank more completely against me. The bleeding slowed, but the skin around her wound had already taken on a greyish tint. She would need proper healing, and soon. Healing I couldn’t give her.
You want to believe you’re the hero who will find a way to protect her no matter what, don’t you? But deep down, you know the truth.
You can’t protect her.
You aren’tmeantto protect her.
I shook off Severin’s taunts.
For now, at least, I could keep her safe.
I lifted her into my arms and started to walk, and I tried not to think about the blood on my hands or the feeling that something monstrous was waking up inside me.
TWENTY-THREE
Aleksander
We made it back to the Rivenholt Palace unscathed.
But three days later, we were still moving in dazed circles, still trying to pull ourselves together after all we’d endured in the Above.
The shard of Lorien’s soul had been locked away for safekeeping in a vault beneath the palace. It helped me regain some semblance of control, not having to feel its constant pull—a small mercy.
My magic still seemed confused, though. Restless. It twisted beneath my skin like a caged, unpredictable animal, growing especially uneasy when confronted with Nova’s shadows. Close proximity to Grimnor made it doubly worse.
It made me sick to admit it, but the dynamic between our magic was undoubtedly shifting in ways I couldn’t explain.
She continued to train with Eamon and pushed her own abilities further each day. The stronger her magic became, themore the wrongness of mine seemed to intensify. It was reaching a point where I found myself questioning if she’d be better off if I kept my distance, hard as that was to do.
We’d barely spoken these past few days, although we did quietly find our way back to one another most evenings. We sat together while we studied maps and reports in weighted silence. I would recline on her bed while she played the violin I’d given her—one of the few things that still managed to calm her agitated mind. I listened while she vented her frustrations and fears. I made sure she ate something before bed, and I held her while she fell asleep.
It was a delicate dance. We were surviving, but the time we spent apart during the day was still creating a chasm between us. Too many things were going unsaid. The mental, magical bond we’d briefly shared was fraying. And my questions about what she discussed in her private council meetings largely went unanswered.
Boring political things, she assured me.
