I don’t want to live in a world where someone like Clare – so innocent, so genuine, so damn clever – could perish. Perish for no reason whatsoever. It isn’t fair.
This world never has been. It’s always been cruel, deceptive, and rotten. I’ve known that from the beginning. And yet, maybe I’d begun to hope that this world could be different. That there could be another way.
And now, I don’t know what to believe.
“Briony.”
I hear someone kneel down beside me, rest their hand on my shoulder.
Thorne.
He doesn’t ask me if I’m okay. It’s pretty obvious that I’m not. Instead, he squeezes my shoulder.
“Stand up now, Briony. Take a deep breath. Steady yourself and stand up.”
“I can’t,” I whisper, not daring to open my eyes. “I can’t. Thorne. She’s dead. She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“She is, Briony.” He inhales. “Come on now, get up. There are people who need you. You have to be strong.”
“I can’t be strong,” I whisper so quietly I’m not sure he even hears me.
“You can be. I know you can. You have to be, Briony. There are too many things and too many people depending on younow. And you can’t let them down. That’s not what Clare would have wanted.”
A violent sob wracks my throat at the mention of her name. Every part of my body hurts, most of all my heart. So painful inside my chest I think I might vomit.
But Thorne is right. Clare believes in me. She believes in all of this. Or she did.
I can’t lie here pretending none of it is happening. But I’m not sure I have the strength to go on.
“Just stand, Briony,” Thorne says. “I’m not asking you to do anything else right now. Just stand.”
I jerk my head in a nod. And then he’s tucking his arm around me, helping me up onto my feet.
I’m exhausted. Utterly and completely exhausted. There’s no strength remaining in my body at all. And I don’t think it’s from the shock or the grief. I think I used every drop of my magic. And now I’m so weak I have to lean on Thorne and have him help me stand.
I take a deep breath in, my mind registering the stench of blood and ash and destruction. Then I force my eyes open, blinking for a moment in the gloom.
It’s worse than I thought. So much worse.
Fly cradles Clare in his arms, sobbing uncontrollably, as Dray pats his shoulder. But he’s not the only one. There are others sobbing too. Parents, children, husbands, wives, sobbing over the dead bodies of so many people.
And all of a sudden, all the despair, the sadness, and the misery that was drowning me one moment is replaced by a deep, deep anger the next. A burning, raging, destructive anger.
I step away from Thorne. My knees buckle momentarily and I nearly fall straight back to the ground again, but I grit my teeth and remain on my feet.
“See!” I yell with all my might at all the hurt, mourning, reticent people around me. “This is their doing. The shadow weavers created those monsters. And they weren’t even here to protect you when you needed them.”
“You,” a little girl says, holding the hand of a younger boy, his face bloodied from a demon scratch. “You saved us.”
“I …”
“You killed all the demons,” she says, looking at me with rapture and awe.
I shake my head. I can’t find the words to answer. I simply gesture at the destruction.
“You did. You saved us,” another man says.
But they’re wrong. I didn’t. I didn’t save them.
