Gods, then spit it out already,I will myself, doing a little bracing of my own.At worst, he’ll reject the very idea of you.Andmortifying as that would be, it isn’t much of a problem, seeing how we’re both slated to die.
“The original vision I had, after I asked the open question—it wasn’t only about the Gray dying; it was also about . . . me and you,” I say, slow and quiet. “Us.”
“Us?” He repeats the word as though it belongs to another language, the tension in him snapping taut. “As in—?”
“Yeah.” Since I can’t bring myself to look at him, I drop my gaze to the ground, counting the cracks in the grimy concrete.One, two,three, four, five. . . I’ll count them all if I have to, if it keeps this charged silence from sparking and setting my skin on fire.Six, seven, eight, nine—
“Raya.” An entire age seems to pass before Ezzo speaks, before he says my name and forces me to meet his eyes. And perhaps he is open to that possibility, because what I see in them isn’t pity, or embarrassment, or even disgust; it’s more akin to indecision, and understanding, and want, I think—or rather, the want to want, to lean in closer and give the future the ending it demands.
Do it.I’m suddenly staring at him every bit as intently as I did in the park, aching to know what his kiss might be like, how it would feel to break a rule this fundamental. But the difference today is that Ezzo isn’t oblivious; while I’m staring at him, he’s staring right back, tracing the line ofmyjaw, and the curve ofmymouth, and the waymylashes graze the top of my deepening blush, the way I’m slowly starting to tilt my head up and up in his direction, a mix of air and hope bubbling in my lungs, waiting, waiting, waiting for him to make the final choice I can’t, to ask our very own version of an open question.
Except he doesn’t.
And all at once, the desire I felt in him turns to panic and a self-loathing flush, a heart-wrenching torrent of pain.
“I’m sorry, Raya, I—I can’t.” Ezzo jerks away from me, leaving my nerves stinging with his absence. “It’s not that I don’t—that you’re not—this just can’t happen, okay? Not now, not ever. It wouldn’t be fair—to either of us.”
Because he’s still in love with someone else.That answer is clear as day and hot as lightning, a truth I should have seen the second he told me the pain will get better with time—but that his hasn’t. That we don’t always get forever.
“What happened to her?” The question slips out unbidden—in curiosity, sure, though it’s also an invitation for him to talk, if he’d like. If he needs to.
“She shattered.” And I guess Ezzo does need to, since after a long moment, he whispers that awful truth into the dark. “She stepped in front of a Green spell meant for me and then I had to watch her loseher magic one splintering crack at a time, until the shadows shattered her to pieces. There was nothing I could do to stop it,” he says, though the sentiment sounds oddly flat, as though he doesn’t quite believe it. “Eve died, and I couldn’t save her, and then I couldn’t find the strength to follow her into the black.”
Colors help me.His heartbreak far outweighs the rejection squirming in my gut. It’s little wonder he lost his head when we watched Adriel’s tribute shatter, and it certainly does explain the reckless disregard he’s shown for his own life. The girl he loved died and ever since, he’s been aching to join her. He’s been living with her ghost this entire time.
“We were supposed to die together,” Ezzo continues, lost to the telling now that he’s begun. “We always knew that death would find us sooner rather than later—we’d already lived much longer than most Hues tend to last. Sometimes, we’d even plan for how it might happen; I know it sounds morbid, but it felt like we were keeping that possibility at bay by looking it in the eye. And when we did, we’d imagine it happening in some wildly spectacular fashion, the sort of death the bards would one day sing a song about. We called it dying like the stars.”
If I didn’t resent the fates before, then I sure as hell do now. It was cruel of them to feed me those words, to have me manipulate him with them, tarnish a cherished memory. Gods, I don’t blame him for lurching away from me; he’s still deep in mourning and yet, here I am, telling him the future wants me to be the new her.
“I’m so sorry, Ezzo,” I say, and I don’t just mean for the partIplayed in his misery, but for the part we all did, every last Shade from Isitar to Sarotuza. Because it breaks my heart that our hate took from him that love, that he’s in pain and we’re the ones who caused it. It breaks and it breaks and it breaks me.
Just like in my original vision.
CHAPTER 28
EZZO
Shame surges through me, potent and strong. Not just for having told a Shade, of all people, about Eve, but for what that Shade saw in my future, for allowing myself to wonder whether I might one day want that.
Hells, for a brief second there, I didwantthat.
I wanted to lean in closer and prove the future right.
Until I didn’t.
I can still feel the ghost of Raya at my side, taste how easy it would have been to do away with logic and jump head first into the unwise. To kiss a Shade. Regardless of how illegal or unlikely that idea was. And it really would have been easy; I mean, Gods, Raya’s beautiful—that’s what first drew my eyes to her in the court chamber during my trial—and even if she wasn’t, she’s brave, and stubborn, and endlessly surprising. Infuriating, too, but in a way that forces me to stay sharp. I could absolutely imagine kissing her, shutting out the guilt, and the memories, and convincing myself it’s time. Because I’ve missed closeness. I’ve missed the thrill—the longing—of craving another’s touch.
But if there was ever a combination more misguided than a Shade and a typic, it would be a Shade and a Hue. We would be hunted forever.
Why are you still considering this?I shake the errant thought from my mind.
Eve was my future.
She was my past, my present, my always.
And that doesn’t change just because she’s gone.
So then, tell Raya that, my conscience whispers, as if in challenge. It’s the only fair thing to do—especially if the fates are promising her something I can’t.
