“Two days ago. Which is why we decided to call off this little adventure of yours. You took too long.”
“I would have taken less time if you’d helped.”
“Well, we didn’t,” his father said bluntly. He glanced at me again, then looked back to his son. “You may have the night to saygoodbye. You will be at my rooms in the morning, ready to go. If you aren’t, I will fetch you like a child and drag you home.”
He vanished.
“Cool,” I said, and tried not to have a panic attack.
“Two days.” Daziel sounded numb. “Two days.If I’d moved sooner—told you earlier—we could have cured it.”
“Tried to cure it,” I reminded him. “We could have failed elsewhere.”
He let out a broken laugh. “But I failed here.”
“Daziel.” I put my hand to his cheek, made him look at me. “You can’t blame yourself for this.”
“Who else should I blame?” Self-recrimination filled his voice. “I made the call. I could have told you months ago.”
“You,” I repeated, aggravated, not at him but on his behalf. “Why was it on you? It’s like Yael said. This was bigger than you, than us. Your people, your government, they should have come to ours. It shouldn’t be on one individual to figure out how to save everything.”
Now he looked helpless. “But I could have done it. If I’d been smarter, faster. I could have saved the Ziz. And now it’s lost.”
“Oh, Daziel.” His pain cut through me as though I’d sliced my own hand. I gathered him to me, stroking his back.
We sat in silence for a moment, disheartened and depressed. I hated seeing him this way. So I changed the subject, trying to sound lighthearted instead of disconcerted. “Your father didn’t like me.”
Daziel looked pained. “He isn’t the most welcoming.”
“He said you have ‘previous obligations’?” I couldn’t suppress a displeased zing.
“There’s expectations in my family about what I should do with my life.”
“Like what? I thought you looked after a rock garden.”
He grimaced up at slowly drifting purple clouds. “For now.”
Great. I should have expected this. “I don’t suppose the ‘no more lies’ covered ‘clear up past lies by omission.’ ”
Daziel winced. “Ah. Yes. There are one or two of those.”
Our chairs jolted beneath us, and the stones of the garden path shuddered and jumped. On the table, our glasses and soup bowls skittered. Daziel leaped to his feet, grabbing my waist as though preparing to haul me into the sky, but the world stopped shaking as suddenly as it had started, leaving us standing together and trembling.
What was happening? If the Ziz was dead, were we really doomed? “Maybe one of the other scrolls also had helpful information,” I said, desperate for hope.
“Maybe.” He smoothed hair out of my face. “Come home with me.”
“What?”
“Come home with me. To the shedim lands. It won’t be easy on you, I shouldn’t lie, but we’re better prepared to handle strange natural magic.”
My heart skipped. I had no idea how to respond. I wanted to be with him too, but I couldn’t leave everything I’d ever known. “Daziel, I can’t. I have school.”
He laughed. “What’s school with the world falling apart?”
This was not a bad point. Still, the idea of leaving struck me as wrong. “I don’t know.” Surely there was still some way to stop the storms, the tremors, the destabilization of natural magic. I couldn’t leave everything at the height of this disaster.
Daziel must have seen the uncertainty on my face, because he switched tactics. “Let’s at least complete the betrothal.” His concerned gaze seared through me, with none of the mischievousness I was used to from him. “It might give you some protection. And the next few months aren’t going to be safe.”
