Virgil clutched at his heart.
They set up in a well-appointed living room, Emory lying down on a divan so she wouldn’t fall flat on her face. Virgil slashed his palm and bled into a bowl of water, bloodletting to call on his Reaper magic.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Ready.”
“When you see dear old Keiran’s ugly face again,” Virgil said, “punch it for me, will you?”
“You’d have to show me how to throw a punch first.”
Virgil gasped in mock offense. “Do these hands look like they’ve ever thrown a punch? I’m insulted. Go ask one of those wingedweirdos. They’re the buff warriors. I’m just the pretty face.”
He was indeed a pretty face to look at as her heart slowed. Emory felt herself slipping into oblivion, and then she was falling through the strangeness of the sleeping realm.
Keiran-not-Keiran was there waiting for her like last time. The golds and silvers in his eyes flashed as he sized her up.
“I see you survived the eldritch in one piece,” he remarked.
She couldn’t tell by the tone of his voice if he was pleased by this or not.
“You knew those beasts were about to attack us,” Emory said, “yet you were in here with me. How can you be in two places at once?”
He made a vague motion with his hand, looking bored by the question. “The same way a tree exists both above and below, feels the air and the earth in equal parts. The same way your magic can be more than one thing at once, and so much more if you’d let it.”
“You seem rather preoccupied with my magic for someone who tried to kill me.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “When I truly mean to kill you, Tidecaller, you’ll know.”
So that was how it would be. Veiled riddles and not-so-veiled threats.
Emory studied him. “What do you want?”
Her question seemed to unsteady him. Almost as if he hadn’t considered it before. He quickly regained his composure and said, “Wanting is such a pathetically mortal thing. I’d forgotten how dreadful it could be until I stepped into this.” He motioned at himself—at Keiran’s body, which was not his own.
Emory couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Is any part of him still there?”
Dark satisfaction played on Keiran’s lips at whatever he saw in her expression. “Would you like him to be?”
He advanced toward her, and it took everything in her not to flinch away from him.He can’t hurt you here, she thought to herself, hoping desperately that it was true.
“Would you like me to tell you that I can taste his memories of you? How deeply he cared for you. How eager he was to tell you those three little words you yourself chose to keep trapped in your throat at the last.” He reached out a hand to brush her hair in a motion that was so very Keiran-like, she stood rooted to the spot, unable to extricate herself from his hypnotizing gaze. “How shocked he was that you’d let him die, in the end.”
This snapped her out of it. Emory wrenched herself away, disgust roiling in her stomach. “He deserved it.” She struggled to keep her composure as she forced out the words. She wasn’t going to let him use her shame like a knife, plunging it right through her heart.
Keiran hummed pensively. “Perhaps.” He cocked his head to the side. “The way he saw it, he believed he was going to make you into something more powerful than what you already are. A formidable vessel to house the power of gods.” His eyes darkened. “Funny how that works out. He was so very wrong, but still, he would have gone to the ends of the universe for you.”
“That’s not… He didn’t care about me. He justneededme. Used me.”
“And paid the price for it with his life.”
There was an appreciative note in his words that unsettled her. But he was right.
Emory thought of Baz—how she had done to him exactly what Keiran had done to her. Used him when she needed him, when it suited her. She didn’t deserve his forgiveness. Not when she herself could never forgive Keiran.
She wanted to believe she was nothing like Keiran—that she would never let herself become him. Someone who was willing to sacrifice his friends. Someone so deluded he’d thought he wasdoing the right thing, that he was going to save her by eradicating everything that she was.
But maybe she’d already started down that path.
