You watched me die—you helped me do it. And yet here I am again, reborn, just as I promised you, and still you doubt me.
“Foul creature,” the Warden hissed, poison in her voice. “Get away from her. We are beyond you now. It’s too late to stop us.”
Ankaret ignored her. She crawled lightly onto my shoulder, easily passing through the Warden’s shield. Her arms and legs were slender as twigs, and stubby little wings of fire illuminated her back. With every movement, tiny whorls of ashes floated around her body.
It is true that I am still weak,Ankaret said,but the others are going to help me. The only thing you need to do is stay strong and resist her will.
I couldn’t speak, couldn’t wrap my mind around what she was telling me. I shook my head wordlessly.
I need you to let me in, Mara.I will not do this without your consent.
“Gareth,” I said, a sob bursting out of me.
I felt him shift closer. “I’m here. Mara, I’m here, and I always will be.”
“I can’t do this.”
“You can.” This time when he tried to reach for me, nothing stopped him. He touched the curve of my wing, and the Warden bellowed in frustration. Whatever she’d done to keep him from me, it seemed she could no longer sustain it.
Gareth wrapped his arms around me and pressed his chest against my back, between my limp and trembling wings. I felt his lips on my nape, beneath my hair.
“I’m right here, Mara,” he said. “I’ve got you.”
It was a sweet but futile thing to say. He didn’t have me. The Warden did. But the sensation of his body curving against mine, when I thought I’d never be lucky enough to feel that again, was better than anything I’d ever known.
“I thought I’d lost you,” I whispered.
“Never.Never.”
“I can’t do this. Not even for you.”
“Certainly you can. Look at you, you’re doing it right now.”
I drew in a deep, shuddering breath, and when I let it out, I felt how easy it would be to keep going, to relax all the way down to my fingertips and let the Warden’s binding magic take hold of me. My eyelids were heavy. Keeping them open was like shoving against something inexorable and immense.
“I’m so tired, Gareth,” I said.
“I know, darling.”
“No, you don’t know. I’mtired. Of all this, everything that’shappened, everything I’ve done…” Their names came to me as whispers:Petra. Posey. Crellin.Everyone I’d lost and every life I had taken.
“I don’t want to do it anymore.” The words left me on a thin breath of air. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t you say that to me.”
The way his voice broke tore at me, but that changed nothing. I meant what I’d said. I let my eyes fall shut. Ankaret pressed her tiny warm hands into the down of my shoulder.
“Everything that happened to you in Mhorghast,” I said quietly. “Everything you did…do you never want to escape from it?”
Gareth’s arms tightened around me. “Of course I do. But if I gave in to those feelings, everyone who hurt me would win.”
“And so what if they do? Defiance alone is not a reason to keep living.”
Saying the words aloud was a relief. Suddenly I felt almost weightless. It would have been so easy to let that feeling bear me away.
“No, but this is.” Gareth put his hands over my heart. “You and me, and everyone who loves you. Your heart and all its goodness, your immeasurable courage, how deeply you care about everything and everyone around you, even at the expense of yourself. Yourlife, Mara—that’s a reason to keep living. Your rare and extraordinary life.”
His impassioned words were weakening my resolve, and that made me furious. I didn’t want my resolve to weaken. I wanted him to say,You’re right, Mara,and let me go.
