She tried for the doors again. Again, I pushed her back. “How will this help your father?”
“If there is magic in Velora, we will not need your spells to fill our nets. We will be able to afford a healer. The fae will come back, and with them, their healing magic.”
I shouldn’t have laughed in her face, but I could not stop the cold, acerbic sound. “And will your father still be alive in the time it will take you to pass through all the gates? To save up enough coin for a healer, to summon those mythical fae? The fae have taken everything—and if you are rash enough to seekthem out, they will take you, as well. Not that it would matter.” Because the gates would kill her well before that.
Kyrelle’s face twisted, her beautiful features sharpening with something deeper than rage. “You think I am weak.”
“No, I don’t,” I said. And I meant it. I could not fathom what it felt like to be a human in Velora in the four hundredth year of the curse. What kind of strength it must take to wake up every damn day, knowing that your body was failing because the land itself was dying, minute by minute, day by day.
My power would die eventually, and my body with it. But at least I had a chance; options, meager as they were. Kyrelle was only alive by the grace of the gifts given to me by the Dark God. And the choices I’d made.
I did not lose everything so that she could die fornothing.
“If you enter that temple, you will die. Then your father will die. Alone, without ever knowing what happened to you. They don’t send word back to the families of those who die at the gates. They stopped doing that a long time ago.” There simply weren’t reliable mail routes anymore. The population of Velora had dwindled too low to facilitate them. Or need them.
I waited, watching for the surrender on her face. Kyrelle was stubborn, but she was not stupid. She’d let me come year after year to cast my spell, even though she hated the sight of me.
But she did not yield. So I used the wound my words had already created to push deeper. “Your father will waste away, too weak to pull in the fishing nets. He will sit at that window by the road, watching and waiting for a daughter who will never come. He will waste away to nothing, and the entire world will forget that he even existed.”
Kyrelle entire face flushed red. She pulled a dagger from her belt, springing forward and driving it toward my chest. She was faster than I’d expected, but the tip hit my shoulder, encountered the padded leather and ricocheted off,disappearing into the snow at our feet. There wasn’t put enough force behind her blow. That was just inexperience. I could see in her face that if she could have killed me, she would have.
How fucking ironic. One family had ousted me. The other wanted to kill me. It seemed that neither bonds of power nor blood were enough to keep someone with me. On my side.
“I don’t need you to like me,” I said, knowing the words were mostly for myself. “I just need you to stay alive.”
Kyrelle’s chest heaved up and down, the exertion of crossing through the snow, tumbling with me on the ground, and trying to stab me too much for her weakened body.
I reached for my belt. Kyrelle flinched back. My stomach clenched. I would never harm her—I had done everything, even pushing the bounds of my own coven, to protect her. But still she flinched.
I unhooked the purse of money and shoved it inside the folds of her cloak, out of sight. “Split it into multiple pouches and hide it against your body. Get on a ship and get out of Velora.”
It wasn’t enough, not for two people. Not even for one. But now that he was ill, maybe her father would finally do the right thing. Maybe he would sell off the remainder of their possessions and make her go.
Kyrelle caught the bag, bending her arm to keep the purse secreted within the folds of her cloak. She stared at the ground between us. When she lifted her head to meet my eyes, relief flooded my senses.
Until she shook her head.
“No. It is not just his body that is giving up, it is his heart. He won’t survive a trip across the sea. I have to go through the gates and lift the curse. It is the only way.”
She said it with such conviction, such belief and love brimming from every word. She loved her father and would do anything for him, including giving up her own life.
I’d never been loved like that. Or if I had, my mother had died too young for me to remember it. Ever since then, I’d been searching. But to dwell too long on what I’d found—and what I hadn’t—was much too dangerous for my fragile psyche.
“Kyrelle—”
“I must do it.”
“No.”
“Let me go.” She ducked under my arm and managed to get a hand on the worn-down door handle. I twisted, grabbing her wrist and wrenching it away. But the door was already opening. Kyrelle threw all of her body weight at it. It wasn’t much, but I was off balance.
In the space of an inhale, I made my decision.
She wasn’t going through that door. I was.
I shoved her out of the way as I stumbled backward into the temple.
“Go,” I could only mouth, all of the air knocked from my chest by the fall. “Go,” I tried again and failed. Then I kicked the door closed and sealed my own fate.
